Triumph and Embraer Collaborate to Demonstrate Advancements in Thermoplastic Structures

On the same subject

• 

  May 6, 2020 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Proposed rule banning Chinese tech needs to consider small contractors, senators warn

  Andrew Eversden Two U.S. senators called on the Office of Management and Budget to ensure that federal regulation banning the government's use of Chinese telecommunications technology include “explicit processes” to help small businesses with compliance. In a May 4 letter sent to acting OMB Director Russ Vought, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., asked Vought to carefully consider to the needs of small businesses while the agency reviews a proposed rule. The senators' concern is in response to a proposed rule under review by OMB implementing Section 889(a)(1)(B) of the fiscal 2019 defense policy law — a provision that bans federal agencies from procuring or doing business with companies using “covered telecommunications equipment or services" in an effort to block Chinese tech companies like Huawei and ZTE from entering the U.S. government's supply chain. Rubio and Cardin are the top two senators on the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. According to the letter, OMB is currently reviewing the draft proposed rule, statutorily required to be implemented Aug. 13. Because smaller companies don't have access to the same resources as larger suppliers, they may need “more assistance and time,” the senators wrote. The pair called the guidance for small businesses “vita,l” given that small businesses make up about one-quarter of federal procurement, worth $120 billion. “By providing these small firms with a clear path toward compliance and a reasonable time frame, we believe that the goal of securing the United States supply chain will be better achieved,” Rubio and Cardin wrote. Outside interest groups representing federal contractors have also pushed Congress to delay the implementation of Part B of Section 889. In a joint letter in late March, the National Defense Industrial Association and the Professional Services Council asked Congress to delay the Aug. 13 date to February 2021. They also cited the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as reason for a delay. “Part B will impose significant financial and operational costs on medium and small-sized firms at a moment of substantial uncertainty and hardship. While we agree that Part B addresses a significant problem in defense supply chains, and that additional measures are needed to protect [Department of Defense] information assets from covered equipment, COVID-19 has made the current implementation timeline infeasible,” the groups wrote. The United States government alleges that Huawei's 5G technology allows for Chinese government espionage and poses a threat to national security. Senior U.S. officials have traveled the globe, urging allies not to include Huawei's technology in their 5G networks. But the effort has been largely unsuccessful, particularly after the United Kingdom announced in January it would allow Huawei to build noncritical pieces of its 5G network. That decision was met with scorn by lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Still, Rubio and Cardin warned that OMB needs to produce the regulation cautiously and carefully. “We are concerned that if the regulatory implementation language fails to adequately consider small businesses, this process could not only result in an ineffective implementation of the prohibition, but also be both harmful and costly to thousands of small federal contractors,” they wrote. https://www.fifthdomain.com/congress/capitol-hill/2020/05/05/proposed-rule-banning-chinese-tech-needs-to-consider-small-contractors-senators-warn/

• 

  June 17, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  Calls grow louder for a fresh European air-defense push

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — NATO members in Europe should band together and sharpen their focus on short- to medium-range air defense, with Germany taking the lead in forging a coalition, analysts on the continent argue. The call by the German Council on Foreign Relations is based on the assumption that air superiority can no longer be taken for granted in future conflicts. Researchers argue that the playing field of air warfare has leveled out in recent years, with more countries deploying aircraft, missiles and drones capable of threatening NATO from the skies. At the same time, European nations have divested sizable chunks of their air defense capabilities with the idea that shooting down enemy planes or missiles would be more of a tactical requirement in the future rather than a permanent, strategic one, according to Christian Mölling, a senior analyst at the think tank who co-authored a study on the issue. “Air defense is a huge headache for NATO,” he told Defense News, adding that the situation is especially dire in the Baltic nations. Germany already holds the designation of a so-called framework nation when it comes to missile defense within the alliance. And while defense officials in Berlin are fond of touting that responsibility in arguing for the ambitious TLVS program to replace the legacy Patriot air and missile defense fleet, there is little to show for, in a practical sense, until the new weapon is actually fielded. That is especially the case when it comes to short-range air defense, which covers threats up to about 8 kilometers away. Within the alliance, those weapons were “largely dismantled” over the last two decades, according to the study. “Building a multi-layered, integrated air defense is a common challenge for all European countries in terms of procurement and operation,” the study says. “Effective defense is only possible if threats can be identified early and jointly. National systems are not sufficient.” On the longer-range side, Germany is holding out hope that the TLVS project can attract buy-in from within Europe over the coming years. In Italy, for example, the military brass appears interested in the technology, but the preferences of politicians in the government are harder to predict. The idea of a European-wide, short-range air defense initiative has been on the table since officials at the European Defence Agency in Brussels concluded the inaugural Coordinated Annual Review on Defence of 2017 and 2018. Member states included the capability in their top priorities for future collaboration. In that sense, there is reason to believe that the idea of a new PESCO project, as proposed by the German Council on Foreign Relations, could get traction. And if European Union officials are to be believed, whatever actual capabilities come out of that intra-continental process will also benefit the NATO alliance as a whole. PESCO is short for Permanent Structured Cooperation, a key policy in the EU's quest for greater defensive capabilities. A new round of collaboration proposals is expected to take shape over the summer to be approved by member states later this year. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/06/16/calls-grow-louder-for-a-fresh-european-air-defense-push/

• 

  May 13, 2020 | International, Aerospace

  Delays Cause Two-Year, $1.5B Extension For F-35 Block 4

  Steve Trimble The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said on May 12 that the Lockheed Martin F-35 Block 4 program must be extended two years due to development delays, adding $1.5 billion to the overall price tag. The original schedule called for completing the Block 4 modernization program in 2024, but the timeline must be extended to 2026, GAO said in the watchdog agency's annual review of the F-35 program. The F-35 Joint Program Office initially estimated the cost to develop all 66 new capabilities in Block 4 would be $10.6 billion. The two-year extension to deliver Block 4 raises the development cost to $12.1 billion, with another $3.4 billion budgeted to procure and insert the capabilities in future U.S. F-35s, GAO said. The Block 4 delays started in 2019. Lockheed planned to deliver the first eight Block 4 capabilities last year, but only one—the automatic ground collision avoidance system—entered service, GAO said. In another example, Lockheed delivered software last year to enable the interim full-motion video capability for the Marine Corps F-35Bs, but failed to deliver the associated hardware, the report said. As Block 4 capabilities have entered testing, the Defense Department's operational testers have noticed other problems. Some of the new capabilities have “caused issues” with existing F-35 functions that previously worked, GAO said. “The contractor had not performed adequate testing of the software before delivering it to the test fleet,” GAO said. For its part, the contractor acknowledged the issues and said they would conduct additional testing in software laboratories before releasing future software blocks, GAO added. https://aviationweek.com/aerospace/aircraft-propulsion/delays-cause-two-year-15b-extension-f-35-block-4