September 14, 2023 | International, Land
General Dynamics pitches updated ‘Foxhound’ for British Army needs
The service fielded hundreds of the vehicles to protect soldiers from mines and improvised explosive devices in Iraq and Afghanistan.
March 2, 2020 | International, Naval
The US Navy’s FFG(X) could be awarded sooner than expected
By: David B. Larter
WASHINGTON – The U..S Navy's next-generation frigate could be awarded within the next few months, earlier than expected, the service's top civilian said Friday.
Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt that he had tasked Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition James Geurts to look at accelerating the award of the first ship, which was slated for this fall.
“The plan was to try and do it in the latter part of this year,” Modly told Hewitt. “I've asked [Geurts] to try and accelerate that earlier, and he's looking into the possibilities for doing that.
“But obviously, you know, we have acquisition rules, and we want to make sure that we do this in the proper way.”
The competition has narrowed to bids from Huntington Ingalls Industries; a team of Navantia and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works; Fincantieri; and Austal USA.
Navantia is offering a version of its F-100 design, which is in use by the Spanish Navy; Austal is submitting a version of its trimaran littoral combat ship; Fincantieri is offering its FREMM design; and Huntington Ingalls is believed to be offering an up-gunned version of its national security cutter.
Lockheed Martin's version of the FFG(X), an up-gunned, twin-screw variant of its Freedom-class LCS, was pulled from the competition in May.
The FFG(X) is supposed to be a small, multimission ship with a modified version of Raytheon's SPY-6 radar destined for the Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, Lockheed Martin's Aegis Combat System, as well as some point defense systems and 32 vertical launch cells for about half the cost of a destroyer.
The first ship ordered in 2020 is expected to cost $1.28 billion, according to budget documents, with the next ship in 2021 dropping to $1.05 billion.
The Navy expects it to take six years to complete design and construction of the first ship, which should be finished in 2026. Once construction begins, planners anticipate it will take 48 months to build.
The second frigate is expected to be ordered in April 2021, and from there it should be delivered about five and a half years after the award date. That means that the first ship should be delivered to the fleet in July of 2026, and the second about three months later.
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/02/28/the-us-navys-ffgx-could-be-awarded-sooner-than-expected
On the same subject
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February 28, 2020 | International, Aerospace
Design Milestone Reached For Air-Launched Hypersonic Missile
Steve Trimble ORLANDO—Lockheed Martin expects to complete the critical design review (CDR) on Feb. 27 for the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), the U.S. military's most technologically ambitious hypersonic weapon, an executive said. The key milestone, indicating an imminent design freeze, comes as part of an unusual development schedule imposed on the ARRW program. The technical complexity of ARRW stems from its high lift-to-drag profile, a shape the U.S. military has never tested successfully in flight. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) program, which shares the advanced ARRW profile, is intended as a risk-reduction measure for ARRW, but still has not completed a self-powered flight test. In fact, the CDR milestone for ARRW originally was scheduled to come after a first flight for TBG, but the Air Force has kept ARRW on its original pace even as schedules for the DARPA program have slipped. “The [original TBG and ARRW] schedules were more serial,” said John Varley, vice president of hypersonics for Lockheed's Missiles and Fire Control business. “As we're moving fast, things are merging together and becoming more parallel. If we waited until all that was done, we wouldn't be moving at the pace that the customer is looking for.” Indeed, Jeff Babione, president of Lockheed's Skunk Works, said last June that he expected the first TBG flight by the end of last year or early next year. But U.S. defense officials now say they expect the DARPA program to enter flight testing later this year, after a planned test of the Block 1 version of the Common Hypersonic Glide Body, a low-lift-to-drag shape for intermediate-range Army and Navy missiles. In other ways, ARRW is further along in development than most military acquisition projects at the CDR milestone, Varley said. “It's not the traditional way of doing it, because at CDR you wouldn't have hardware built, you wouldn't have [demonstration/validation] testing done. And this is very mature,” he said. https://aviationweek.com/shows-events/air-warfare-symposium/design-milestone-reached-air-launched-hypersonic-missile
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November 9, 2020 | International, Aerospace
BAE Systems secures US Army 'A-Team' technology development deals
by Carlo Munoz BAE Systems has secured several US Army research and development pacts that are designed to help create advanced technologies to team manned, unmanned, and autonomous aircraft in future combat operations. The company's FASTLabs research directorate was awarded the army contracts, totalling USD9 million, which will focus technology development projects for human-machine interface, resource capability, and situational awareness management on the service's Advanced Teaming Demonstration Program (A-Team). The three focus areas in which BAE Systems' engineers were contracted to take on under the A-Team programme are “designed to advance manned and unmanned teaming (MUM-T) capabilities that are expected to be critical components in the U.S. Army's Future Vertical Lift (FVL) program,” according to a company statement issued on 3 November. Company officials anticipate the development of a “highly automated system to provide situational awareness, information processing, resource management, and decision making that is beyond human capabilities”, the statement said. “These advantages become exceedingly important as the Army moves toward mission teams of unmanned aircraft that will be controlled by pilots in real time,” it added. A majority of BAE Systems' A-Team work will leverage the company's Future Open Rotorcraft Cockpit Environment Lab, which will host “simulation tests and demonstrations with products from different contractors” vying to integrate their MUM-T applications into the army's FVL programme. Teaming of manned and unmanned aerial assets was a key objective of the army's initial capstone exercise for Project Convergence. https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/bae-systems-secures-us-army-a-team-technology-development-deals