UK, Finland, Estonia practise subsea infrastructure protection in Baltic Sea | Reuters

On the same subject

• 

  June 12, 2020 | International, Naval

  Senate’s defense bill looks to pump money into shipbuilding suppliers

  By: David B. Larter and Joe Gould WASHINGTON — Despite howls of criticism from Congress over the Navy's seven-ship budget request earlier this year, the Senate Armed Services Committee's markup of the National Defense Authorization Act stopped short of adding extra ships. Instead, lawmakers are opting to authorize the purchase of long-lead-time materials to keep the industrial base healthy. With submarine builders under strain from the coronavirus pandemic and a dearth of suppliers, Congress had sought to add a second Virginia-class submarine. But now the SASC has used its annual defense policy bill to authorize about $472 million for long-lead procurement “so they can be ready to go, if not this year, than at the next opportunity,” Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., the committee's ranking member said Thursday. The strategy of authorizing long-lead-time materials, designed to keep steady business to critical suppliers and make canceling a ship that Congress has already spent money on more painful, was one the SASC used in other places as well. The strategy of authorizing long-lead-time materials is designed to maintain steady business for critical suppliers. It also has the benefit of making it difficult to cancel a ship on which Congress has already spent money. Several programs have already benefited from long-lead-time money, and for its part, SASC is looking to authorize money to the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program, the amphibious assault ship program and the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock program. On the submarine front, the president's budget requested only one Virginia-class sub for fiscal 2021 ,and staffers said fully funding a second sub would be unwise because the shipyard would be unable to use the money in a single year given the workload. “The other issue too is the shipyards are in the process of not only building the Virginia class, but Columbia class is also coming on,” Reed said. “They have extensive workload, but we have provided ... them with the ability to build that 10th submarine.” The Navy contracted with Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries to build nine Block V Virginia-class submarines in December. The long-lead-time money is intended to preserve an option to buy a 10th Virginia sub if it can be shoehorned into both companies' workflow without disrupting Columbia. SASC also provided language that approved the Navy's request to buy the first two Columbia-class submarines in tandem. In addition to the long-lead-time materials money for subs, the bill authorizes floating about $260 million for the Arleigh Burke class, which the Navy has talked about truncating; $500 million for the next two San Antonio-class ships; and an additional $250 million toward the ninth amphibious assault ship, LHA-9. Congress previously appropriated $1 billion in funding toward LHA-9, but the Navy did not request additional funds for FY21, according to the Congressional Research Service. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved its initial version of the FY21 NDAA on Wednesday for consideration by the full Senate. From there it is typically reconciled with the House's version, which the House Armed Services Committee will mark up on July 1. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/06/11/senates-defense-bill-looks-to-pump-money-into-shipbuilding-materials/

• 

  December 15, 2022 | International, C4ISR

  Kratos Receives Initial $30 Million Funding on Potential $250 Million C5ISR Single Award Production Program

  Work under this new program award will be performed at secure Kratos engineering and manufacturing facilities

• 

  December 2, 2019 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  How we talk about China — and why it matters

  Murray Brewster · Reports of human rights violations are pushing trading countries like Canada into a corner In both war and diplomacy, language matters. And if one thing was evident from the flood of words coming out of the Halifax International Security Forum last weekend, it's that Western democracies, despite their vows to uphold human rights, have no common language to define their view of — and relationship with — China. The world is rapidly approaching a crossroads with Beijing, a point where nations will have to decide whether to treat the burgeoning superpower as a trading partner, a rival — or an active threat. Secret Chinese documents were released to media outlets recently which show how the Muslim minority Uighur population is being locked up in mass detention camps and subjected to "systematic brainwashing." Beijing's violent response to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong revived grim memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. So is China a competitor or an adversary? 'Naive' about China's motives The answer to that question seems to depend on which country's leaders are answering it — how heavily Beijing has invested in their nations' markets, how badly their businesses want access to that vast Chinese market. "For many years, folks were naive about Chinese motivations," U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien told journalists during an on-the-record briefing in Halifax over the weekend. "In the past, the relationship with China was driven solely by trade, driven solely by economics." O'Brien describes China, rather antiseptically, as a "near-peer competitor," not as an adversary. Still, there were points during the briefing when O'Brien's language became decidedly adversarial — even dystopian — as he described the high-tech incarceration and forced re-education of as many as one million Uighurs. In the context of the dispute over allowing Chinese telecom giant Huawei into Western 5G wireless systems, O'Brien asked whether Western Europe would have allowed the Soviet Union into their countries to build railroads at the height of the Cold War. A new Cold War? On the record, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan also was not prepared to describe China as an adversary — but he was decidedly mushy when asked how we should describe it. The confusion on display in Halifax over the question of whether the West has arrived at the threshold of a new Cold War was widespread. U.S. Admiral Phillip Davidson, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, would not describe the current moment as "a new Cold War" but warned that the West needs to be prepared to continually "call out" China when it crosses internationally accepted lines. Many say some of those lines have been crossed already — through the arbitrary detention of the Uighurs (which China attempts to justify with the claim that it's fighting Islamic extremism) and through its program of constructing artificial islands in the South China Sea, which has been condemned by an international tribunal at the Hague. So, again ... rival or adversary? 'Feeding ... a monster' Lady Pauline Neville-Jones, a former top British diplomat and adviser to ex-U.K. prime minister David Cameron, said China has signalled it intends to become an "unequalled" high-tech nation. Beijing has said it's prepared to pour real money into achieving that goal — with Western nations supplying the world-class post secondary institutions that are training the next generation of Chinese engineers. "We are feeding something that could be a monster," she told the Halifax forum. "So what do we do about it? As long as we pursue our relations with China, largely separately on the basis of short-term national interest, I think we are giving away the game." It took Western allies several years to come with up a comprehensive Cold War strategy following the Second World War, she pointed out. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-u-s-sajjan-uighur-halifax-international-security-forum-1.5372856