June 22, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Est-ce que l’industrie militaire tente d’atteindre la carboneutralité ? | Le Devoir
Les armées échafaudent des plans ambitieux pour réduire leur consommation gargantuesque de combustibles fossiles.
October 14, 2020 | International, Naval
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy is looking to build a new generation of destroyers from a clean-sheet design, following the model of one of its most successful ship classes, the Arleigh Burke-class DDG, the service's top officer said Tuesday.
The idea, colloquially referred to in-house as DDG Next, is to build a new hull smaller than the nearly 16,000-ton Zumwalt-class destroyer but still big enough to accommodate a larger missile magazine, Adm. Michael Gilday told a virtual audience at Defense One's State of the Navy event.
“I don't want to build a monstrosity. But I need deeper magazines on ships than I have right now,” the chief of naval operations said. “I'm limited with respect to DDG Flight IIIs in terms of what additional stuff we could put on those ships. ... So the idea is to come up with the next destroyer, and that would be a new hull. The idea would be to put existing technologies on that hull and update and modernize those capabilities over time.”
The Navy is supposed to start buying the new ship in 2025, according to the service's 2020 30-year shipbuilding plan, though it's unclear how its forthcoming force structure assessment will affect those plans. In his recent speech on the Defense Department's plan for a 500-plus ship Navy, Defense Secretary Mark Esper made no mention of the future large surface combatant.
To avoid another costly failure, such as the canceled next-generation cruiser or severely truncated DDG-1000 program, the service is harkening back to its successful Arleigh Burke program, the mainstay of the Navy's surface combatant program for the past 30 years, Gilday said. Much like on the forthcoming Constellation-class frigates, the service plans to install fielded systems on the new ship and upgrade them over time.
“So think DDG-51 (that's exactly what we did): We had a new hull but we put Aegis on it,” Gilday said. “We put known systems that were reliable and were already fielded out in the fleet. That's kind of the idea. I call it DDG Next to kind of right-size it. Smaller than a Zumwalt but packing some heat nonetheless.”
The Navy estimates it would need $22 billion annually in constant year 2019 dollars to execute its old shipbuilding plan, though the Congressional Budget Office put the estimate more than 30 percent higher. A major driver in the difference between the CBO and Navy estimate was the cost of a future large surface combatant, according the Congressional Research Service.
The emergence of hypersonic missiles has been a driving factor in the Navy's desire to field a new large surface combatant since such weapons wont fit in the current vertical launch system cells on Burke-class destroyers and existing cruisers. They will, however, fit in the Virginia Payload Module being built into the Block V Virginia submarines awarded last year.
June 22, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Les armées échafaudent des plans ambitieux pour réduire leur consommation gargantuesque de combustibles fossiles.
October 6, 2021 | International, Land
David Marsh, the MoD's director of project delivery, was named as the senior official responsible for one of Britain's most high-profile military programs in a letter released by the department and the government's Infrastructure and Projects Authority.
October 22, 2020 | International, Naval, Security
Ed Adamczyk Oct. 21 (UPI) -- Boeing has received a $30 million U.S. Navy contract will demonstrate advanced missile technologies for use on F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter planes, the company said. Boeing and the Navy's Air Warfare Center Weapons Division will develop the Supersonic Propulsion Enabled Advanced Ramjet, or SPEAR, flight demonstrator, with a first flight scheduled for 2022. The contract comes after the Department of Defense sought information to help the Navy determine technical requirements of future carrier-based land and sea strike weapons systems, a Boeing statement on Tuesday said. The statement cites the company's "prior successes" in work on the experimental X-51A Waverider, a hypersonic weapon capable of traveling at five times the speed of sound, as well as the Triple Target Terminator program. The T-3 was led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and explored use of very-long-range missiles launched from aircraft to combat hostile aircraft, cruise missiles and on-ground air defense shields. Although no connection between supersonic and hypersonic missiles was announced, the Boeing statement indicates that the capabilities of the demonstrator will be included in future anti-ship and land-attack missiles carried by fighter planes. Boeing-built Navy F/A-18E/F Super Hornets will likely have advanced features added during Block III upgrade programs. Weapon advancements from the SPEAR program could also be added to F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft as well. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2020/10/21/Boeing-US-Navy-to-develop-long-range-strike-missile-demonstrator/5121603298420/