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August 12, 2020 | International, Naval

US Navy commissions another Littoral Combat Ship amid renewed push to fix the program

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WASHINGTON – The U.S. Navy Saturday commissioned its latest littoral combat ship amid a top-level push to fix the ship's nagging reliability issues and forge a path to make the small surface combatants useful in the years ahead.

The monohull Freedom-variant LCS St. Louis was commissioned at a private event in its namesake city, the 22nd LCS and 10th Freedom variant to join the fleet. There will be 35 LCS in the fleet once all are commissioned.

Change is in the wind for LCS once again, which has already seen several shakeups to its system. A high-level effort is underway to address problems with its complicated drive train built for high speeds that have limited the ships availability for tasking as well as to finally field its long-delayed mission packages. Mission packages will make the ships either a surface warfare hull, a mine hunter or an antisubmarine ship.

Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday told Defense News in a July 16 interview that he was preparing to increase LCS deployments by two-and-a-half times over the next two years to finally shake out how to best employ the ships, as well as develop a plan to finally field the mine and ASW mission modules.

“There are things in the near term that I have to deliver, that I'm putting heat on now, and one of them is LCS,” Gilday said. “One part is sustainability and reliability. We know enough about that platform and the problems that we have that plague us with regard to reliability and sustainability, and I need them resolved.

“That requires a campaign plan to get after it and have it reviewed by me frequently enough so that I can be sighted on it. Those platforms have been around since 2008 — we need to get on with it.

Experts who spoke to Defense News in July said the Navy would most likely need to accept less capability than they had planned for the ships to have if the service is to get the most out of the ships.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/08/10/us-navy-commissions-another-littoral-combat-ship-amid-renewed-push-to-fix-the-program/

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  • Interview: Finland’s defense minister talks air defense, EU procurement regulations

    May 14, 2018 | International, Aerospace

    Interview: Finland’s defense minister talks air defense, EU procurement regulations

    By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — Finland's defense minister, Jussi Niinistö, visited the Pentagon May 8 to sign a letter pledging greater trilateral cooperation between his nation, the United States and Sweden. After the event, he talked with Defense News about his goals for the meeting, shared concerns about the European Union's new defense initiative and Finland's relationship with NATO. Finland just signed a new statement on trilateral defense cooperation with the U.S. and Sweden, but it's fairly broad language. What do you see as the most concrete part of the agreement? Firstly, I have to say it is not a “trilateral agreement,” in a legally binding way. It is a statement of intent, and there is a big difference with that. I think the most important part of the statement of intent is the exercise part. We have had good exercise cooperation with the United States and Sweden lately. For instance, last year, Sweden arranged a multinational exercise called Aurora, [in] which both U.S. and Finland participated. For instance, right now in Finland there is an Army exercise called Arrow, there are U.S. Marines taking part in that. In the autumn, there will be a big exercise in Norway called Trident Juncture ― high-visibility exercise. Finland will be taking part with 1,500 or up to 2,000 soldiers, and also Sweden is taking part in that big exercise. Remember that in 2021, Finland will be arranging a similar kind of exercise like Sweden did with the Aurora exercise, so we will have over 20,000 soldiers in Finland, and the most important partners in that exercise are the Untied States and Sweden. But the 2021 exercise has been in the works for a while. So does this change that at all? Well, it is a cooperation done on a win-win basis. We go to exercise, for instance, to Sweden or the United States, Finnish Air Force is taking part at Red Flag exercise in October this year. This is the first time in Finnish Air Force history that we take part in this biggest exercise in the world. The United States comes to our exercise. So everybody hopes to benefit in this cooperation. Finland has been very supportive of the EU Permanent Structured Cooperation on Security and Defence initiative, but the U.S. has been wary. Did that topic come up during your talks with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis? Yes, it was a topic. PESCO is a topic, I guess. Every time Secretary Mattis meets with a European counterpart, he will talk about PESCO. And I understand it. We talk with the same voice on this issue because, for instance, the United States defense industry is worried about this PESCO project, [if it will] lead to the fact that every country in the European Union has to buy defense products from the European Union. And Finland doesn't want it to be like that. We have a strong opinion that we want to buy the best available defense material, wherever we want, because since 1992, when Finland decided to buy F-18 fighter planes, we have been practically married with United States defense technology, and we buy a lot of stuff, from Israel also. So for a country like Finland, which is militarily nonaligned and has territorial defense, [it] has to take care of defense on her own if needed. Of course we hope partners [will come to our aid], but alone if needed. It's very important that PESCO is not excluding [non-EU industries]. Finland is in the early process of buying a new fighter. How do you balance between quantity and quality when looking at the new fighter? We have money for €7-10 billion (U.S. $8-12 billion), and we are going to buy 64 fighter planes. We have been always counting on quality: quality on planes and quality on training our pilots. Our pilots are the best in the world, let me say that, because they are trained so well. We have our own special program. We train them in Finland, and they get along very well in international [exercises]. I am thrilled to see what happens in the Red Flag exercise, what is the level of expertise of Finnish pilots now, because it has been very good during the recent years. Sweden is looking to buy Patriot, and some of the Baltics have limited networked air-defense capabilities. Would you want an interoperable system among all Baltic nations for air defense? No. No. We are not exploring that kind of possibility. But we have done cooperation when it comes to radar with Estonia. For instance we bought medium-range radars, we purchased 10 and Estonia two, so we bought them together. So we do that kind of cooperation. And it was a couple of years ago. Could you see that expanding to other nations or areas? We can buy together. For instance, we bought ― last year I was able to buy surplus material from South Korea, K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzers, 48 pieces. At the same time, we negotiated the same deal for Estonia, who is going to buy [the same]. So we do that kind of cooperation all the time, [but] Estonia is part of NATO, we are a militarily nonaligned country. We make materiel procurements together, but it doesn't bind us. What do you want to see happen from the upcoming NATO summit? There are issues to be discussed inside NATO, for instance, the command structure. But of course we are looking forward to taking part in the Resolute Support mission, and the political dialogue all in all is important for us. We want to be part of that, and I know Sweden does too. Anything you will specifically be pushing for? Well, Finland is not going to push in a NATO summit. We just hope that we can take part in these summits in the future and have this important political dialogue together and to be partners in NATO, enhanced-opportunities partners. That is good for our defense capabilities. That, we want to continue. https://www.defensenews.com/interviews/2018/05/11/interview-finlands-defense-minister-talks-air-defense-eu-procurement-regulations/

  • La Commission européenne crée un « Observatoire des technologies critiques » pour favoriser l’innovation et les synergies

    February 23, 2021 | International, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

    La Commission européenne crée un « Observatoire des technologies critiques » pour favoriser l’innovation et les synergies

    La Commission européenne a présenté, lundi 22 février, un plan d'action afin de créer des synergies entre les secteurs de la défense, du civil et du spatial. Le commissaire européen Thierry Breton a souligné que le FED (Fonds européen de défense), dont la vocation est de pousser les entreprises du secteur à former des alliances transfrontalières, afin de doper l'innovation, représente « un moyen très puissant à notre disposition ». Des synergies peuvent être créées entre ce fonds et d'autres programmes de l'UE, dans les domaines du spatial, du numérique, de la sécurité intérieure, notamment. Le plan d'action de Bruxelles repose en particulier sur l'identification d'industries clés pour l'avenir. La Commission va créer un « Observatoire des technologies critiques », qui fournira des rapports bisannuels, visant à orienter les efforts sur quelques domaines ciblés. Les secteurs du cloud, des processeurs, du spatial et des technologies quantiques ont notamment été mis en avant. Trois projets sont déjà cités, concernant les drones, la connectivité aux réseaux par satellite et la gestion du trafic spatial. Le plan entend inclure les PME, les startups ou les petits centres de recherche, en les aiguillant au mieux vers les mécanismes de financement auxquels ils pourraient prétendre au-delà de leur domaine traditionnel. « Nombreuses sont les innovations qui sont nées dans des petits labos », a souligné la vice-présidente de la Commission européenne, Margrethe Vestager. Les Echos et Le Figaro du 23 février

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    December 6, 2021 | International, Aerospace

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