United Arab Emirates Orders Additional Lockheed Martin Sniper Advanced Targeting Pods

On the same subject

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  June 25, 2019 | International, Aerospace

  With all eyes on F-35, AAR Corp. looks to ‘clean up’ on F-16 maintenance

  By: Jill Aitoro LE BOURGET, France — As a number of companies chase maintenance work for the F-35 fighter jet, one firm is planning to clean up on the F-16. AAR Corp., a provider of global aftermarket aviation services, won a seven-year contract with the Royal Danish Air Force to perform maintenance, repair and overhaul, or MRO, of Pratt & Whitney F100-220 engine components on the General Dynamics F-16 jet. That win, which came earlier this year, is the latest contract in a long-term relationship supporting the Danish Air Force and air forces across Europe with MRO services from the company's repair facility in Amsterdam. That facility supports about $500 million in business, much of it tied to the F-16. But the win also fits well into a grander ambition of the company, said Brian Sartain, senior vice president of repair and engineering services at AAR. “Everybody is running after F-35 capability,” he said. “But the Danish Air Force is still going to have a lot of F-16s for [the] foreseeable future, and there are still a lot of F-16s being flown around the world.” Sartain pointed to “fairly high-publicized” F-16 maintenance requirements coming down the pike for the U.S. Air Force, which reported a 65-70 percent mission-capable rate for F-16s in 2017. AAR has a facility in Duluth, Minnesota, which is located across the airfield from Duluth Air National Guard Base — home to the 148th Fighter Wing and its F-16C Fighting Falcon aircraft. “Our facility is a perfect place to do F-16 maintenance. We have a lot of capacity,” Sartain said. “We're three tiers down in the F-35 component chain in the way those are being bid. We're not interested. So, while others are running after the F-35, we're cleaning up on the F-16s, and we're happy to do that.” Beyond its F-16 work, AAR supports airframe maintenance for the P-8A fleet for the U.S. Navy, Australia and Foreign Military Sales customers. AAR and Boeing were each awarded seven-year indefinite delivery, indefinite-quantity contracts from Naval Air Systems Command in February 2018, competing each year on workshare. While Boeing performed the majority of work the first year, AAR was recently awarded the larger slice for 2019. “Frankly, we're moving to majority share because our performance has been better,” Sartain said. “Most program competitors will need to sub tier to another company and then stack profit on top of profit. For government, it's a better value for us to be a prime, and for us it's a great opportunity to be a prime.” AAR supports the P-8 work from its Indianapolis facility, where at any given time four P-8s are in the hanger, with two steady lines of maintenance. The location is also used to support maintenance of Southwest Airlines 737 aircraft, which share the same airframe as the P-8. It's gone from about 20 percent military and 80 percent commercial maintenance to an even split. “Southwest asks that airplanes are returned in about 21 days. For the P-8, the Navy allows 60 for turnaround,” Sartain said. “The airplane comes in, we have a small crew of 30-40 that hold secret clearances and lock in a room the top-secret equipment, and then I can flex mechanics from Southwest to take advantage of that experience." https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/paris-air-show/2019/06/21/with-all-eyes-on-f-35-aar-looks-to-clean-up-on-f-16-maintenance/

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  November 29, 2021 | International, Aerospace, C4ISR

  Army to work with satellite radar imagery provider ICEYE

  Because SAR isn't dependent on visibility, it can be used to produce imagery at any time of day or night and through cloud cover.

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  May 14, 2018 | International, C4ISR

  What to expect from AI, space and other tech over the next 18 months

  By: Aaron Mehta What will the next 18 months mean for the Pentagon's ongoing challenge to maintain a technological edge over its enemies? That was the question posed to a panel of experts at the 17th annual C4ISRNET conference Thursday. And the answers underline just how wide the technical areas of expertise are that Pentagon officials need to get their heads around in the modern era — and how the situation will remain fluid going forward. For Richard Linderman, deputy director for research and engineering in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense, the focus is on manufacturing the vital microelectronics that provide the base for all of America's high-end technologies. He predicts a push to create those chips at a higher rate domestically, which in turn would allow greater trust that the chips, forming the basis of communications equipment or artificial intelligence, would not be messed with by a foreign entity. Concern about the domestic production of microelectronics is expected to be part of a large defense industrial base review now underway. “If you're right out on the pointy end of the spear, you might not want chips made in China to be the foundation of your communications gear,” Linderman told the audience. “So I think you're going to see those kinds of investments increase dramatically, and it will be an exciting prospect for us to bring new dimensions to this discussion of trusted, assured microelectronics.” James Hasik, a professor at the National Defense University, said he would be keeping a close eye on how the autonomous Sea Hunter vehicle does during ongoing testing. DARPA recently transferred the Sea Hunter, designed to travel thousands of miles over open seas, for months at a time, without a crew member on board, over to the Navy for continued testing. “The economics of that concept are so compelling,” Lungu said. If the concept proves out, it could have “some profound applications for fleet structure, some profound applications for warfighting.” Clark Groves, a space expert also at NDU, predicted that the long-awaited boom in small satellites will finally reach critical mass in the near-future, driven by the desire to move the massive telecommunications market onto cheaper systems. DoD stands to benefit, as this would be happening at the same time the Pentagon seeks to move from relying on massive, expensive aggregated systems towards a disaggregated model relying on multiple cheap, smaller systems — which present more of a challenge for any enemy nation that may seek to take out American assets in space. “Once small satellites begin being produced in large numbers, that will fundamentally alter the industrial base of the status quo, and that will also affect the launch base,” Groves said, which in turn “will give opportunities to DoD for more effective per-cost basis to exploit the architecture that we need for resilience.” Finally, Ed Brindley, acting deputy chief information officer for cybersecurity at the Pentagon, pointed to a “more determined focus” inside the Pentagon to shift how it handles artificial intelligence. At the core of that, he said, is the upcoming AI Center of Excellence, which Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan predicted will be up and running in the next six months. “Part of what we will see will be opportunities for us to adopt some of what is occurring within industry today,” Brindley said, noting that AI isn't just for warfighting but could have massive impacts on the internal processes of the Pentagon, including in the medical and legal professions. https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/c4isrnet-conference/2018/05/10/what-to-expect-from-ai-space-and-other-tech-areas-over-the-next-18-months/