December 4, 2019 | International, Naval
By: David B. Larter
orrection: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of boats awarded to General Dynamics Electric Boat.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy on Monday awarded its largest-ever shipbuilding contract to General Dynamics Electric Boat for construction of nine Virginia-class attack submarines, eight of which will have an 84-foot section that boosts the boat's strike missile capacity.
The contract for the Block V Virginia-class subs, worth $22.2 billion, could grow by another $2 billion if the Navy exercises an option for a 10th boat. The contract is for two fewer boats than the 11 proposed by the fleet in this year's budget submission.
“A lot of hard work across the whole team to structure the contract in such a way as to balance risk between the government and the shipbuilder,” James Geurts, the Navy's top acquisition official, said during a roundtable with members of the media to announce the contract signing. “If the shipbuilder delivers on target, the multiyear savings will be 16.5 percent, or $4.4 billion in savings. So it's a pretty important day for us.”
Guerts, the assistant secretary of the Navy for research, acquisition and development, said that when you add government-furnished equipment into the contract, the total value of the program swells to about $35 billion.
The first boat in Block V, SSN 802, is currently under construction but does not have the Virginia Payload Module, or VPM. The next boat, 803, will have VPM. All of the boats will have an upgraded acoustics suite.
In the briefing, Navy officials said that if the service opts for all 10 boats, six of the boats would be constructed at Electric Boat's partner yard, Huntington Ingalls Newport News, and four would be built at Electric Boat.
The move to put most of the work in Newport News was done to balance the increased workload at Electric Boat with the start of the Columbia class, the next generation of ballistic missile submarines slated to begin construction this year.
In a statement, Electric Boat President Kevin Graney said the contract provides stability for his shipyard.
“This contract allows for our shipbuilding team, our suppliers and our employees to plan ahead so that we can continue to deliver submarines of unmatched quality, stealth and lethality,” Graney said.
Dave Bolcar, Newport News' vice president of submarine construction, likewise hailed the contract as a means of stability in the submarine industrial base.
"Today's contract maintains the Virginia-class build rate that provides continued stability to our workforce and to the 5,000 suppliers that will support submarines for the next decade,” he said. "This contract also continues the two per year construction cadence essential to sustaining production efficiencies, while ensuring our national security and the Navy's continued undersea superiority.”
March 12, 2024 | International, Land
The Army is changing directions in its effort to field a long-range cannon, scrapping its 58-caliber prototype in favor of considering available systems.
November 21, 2018 | International, Land
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Endeavor Robotics has provided quick, off-the-shelf solutions to the U.S. Army for many years, but the Boston-based company is now gaining significant traction at a time when the service is looking to streamline its petting zoo of ground robots. By necessity, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army scrambled to buy unmanned ground vehicles that could provide a level of standoff between soldiers and the dangers faced on the battlefield. This resulted in the procurement of roughly 7,000 UGVs from Talons to PackBots to Dragon Runners. Endeavor, which launched as a private company in 2016 but previously existed as iRobot's defense and security business, supplied PackBots to the service as well as a few other small UGVs. It gained more traction in October 2017, when the company secured a to provide the service a platform it calls Centaur: a medium-sized robot (less than 164 pounds) to provide standoff capability to identify and neutralize explosive hazards. That served as the groundwork for what the company hopes will be major expansion in the Army, not only delivering an array of systems but supporting a strategy of interoperability. Future bots Now Endeavor is setting its sights on two other efforts underway that would transition the Army from its hodgepodge procurement strategy used during the wars in the Middle East to a common chassis for a small, medium and large UGV, all managed by one common controller. Each system is meant to have a high level of interoperability and plug-and-play capability as missions expand for ground robots and technology improves. The Army already whittled down the competition in April to provide a Common Robot System-Individual, or CRS-I — a man-packable robot that is less than 25 pounds and highly mobile, equipped with advanced sensors and mission modules for dismounted forces. The design will allow operators to quickly reconfigure for various missions in the field. Endeavor will compete against QinetiQ for a contract expected to be worth up to $400 million to build more than 3,000 robots. The contract award is anticipated in the first quarter of calendar year 2019. Endeavor's offering has been kept under wraps, literally and figuratively, with its CRS-I platform covered in a shroud inside of a case at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference. The Army's other major program — the Common Robotic System-Heavy or CRS-H — is a larger platform expected to weigh 500 to 1,000 pounds. The system will be expected to perform highly dexterous manipulation procedures to disarm vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices from a safe distance. Endeavor survived a first downselect in the CRS-H competition with plans to use its Kobra platform as the base, Tom Frost, Endeavor's president, told Defense News in a recent interview. There are now three competitors in the mix as of this summer. The program will have a series of demonstrations that will assist the Army in choosing a winner. The first demonstration is underway at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and the second is expected to take place in the first quarter of 2019. Beyond the Army's current programs, Endeavor has been working to refine its technology through programs like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's effort to build a system-of-systems solution that can operate in subterranean environments. It's the only company among a list of participants in academia to secure a $1.5 million contract to participate in the DARPA challenge. The company's solution consists of the Kobra robot that will enter subterranean environments carrying radio repeaters — based on the company's small, throwable FirstLook robots — and drop them off along the way to continue connectivity as it travels deeper underground, according to Frost. The system will also carry a four-legged robot supplied from Ghost Robotics. The robot would deploy from Kobra to explore more difficult and rugged terrain, and a quadcopter will investigate vertical shafts and other hard to reach places, Frost described. “All robots will be linked by the same radio technology and all the data they gather will be assembled into one picture,” Frost said. The final winner of the challenge will win $2 million in 2021. An era of autonomy While robots have been around for years and “are really fantastic,” Frost said, “the way you really recognize the full potential of the ground robots is to make them autonomous.” The company has been working on capability for its robots to self-build maps of an area, travel autonomously, and report or tag noteworthy information along the way. All of Endeavor's systems have built-in algorithms, for instance, to detect a human or an explosive. “They don't require an operator to have their hand on the joystick the entire time,” Frost said. “Our systems have eliminated the joystick altogether” in favor of a touchpad with self-explanatory icons. Looking deeper into the future, Endeavor is positioning itself to participate in the Army's newest, and potentially largest ever, ground robotics modernization effort, the Robotic Combat Vehicle program, which is just beginning to take shape under Army Futures Command. https://www.defensenews.com/unmanned/2018/11/12/one-company-wants-to-help-herd-us-army-robots
August 24, 2018 | International, Aerospace
By: Pierre Tran PARIS — European missile company MBDA and microchip maker Soitec said Aug. 21 they are acquiring Dolphin Integration, a design firm for low-power chips which has fallen into receivership. The two companies will buy through a joint venture the chip maker, which filed for insolvency July 24. Dolphin Integration has designed chips which are “indispensable” for certain highly classified sectors, including the French nuclear deterrent, a defense source said. MBDA will acquire 40 percent, while Soitec will own 60 percent. MBDA and Soitec will pay a total of some €6 million (U.S. $7 million) to acquire most assets of Dolphin Integration, pay some of the liabilities and inject a significant amount of cash to meet working capital requirements, the companies said. Further details of how the acquisition amount will be shared were not immediately available. All the business and staff will be kept on, but the sale price will not cover all amounts owed to creditors, Dolphin Integration said in an Aug. 21 statement. MBDA is a strategic customer of Dolphin Integration for defense applications since 2004, the missile company said. The acquisition will strengthen its industrial collaboration and long-term commercial pipeline for application specific integrated circuit and system-on-chip products, the company added. “With the support of MBDA, Dolphin Integration will be able to advance its positions in aerospace and defense design,” the missile company said. Other key clients include Airbus Defence & Space, Safran and Thales, besides MBDA, the defense source said. Soitec specializes in chips drawing on fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) technology, running on low power and at high speed. The acquisition can be seen as an “offensive” move by securing a market upstream for FD-SOI, while MBDA takes a "defensive " step by protecting a strategic supplier, the defense source said. Soitec played an active role in an industry group which lobbied the Elysée president's office to support a European Project of Common Interest, the source said. Such projects are backed by the European Commission for cross-border work on infrastructure and energy. Soitec will seek to strengthen Dolphin Integration in the semiconductor market, to develop and promote products and services in strategic sectors such as mobile devices and infrastructure, data centers, and space and industrial applications, the chip specialist said. Dolphin Integration had annual sales of €17 million for the year to March 31, 2018 and employs 155 staff, of which 130 are design engineers. The company is based in Grenoble. MBDA's interest in semiconductors has sharpened since the U.S. blocked the sale of American chips for the Scalp cruise missile sought by Egypt to arm its fleet of Rafale fighter jets. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/08/23/two-french-defense-heavyweights-scoop-up-dophin-chip-maker