February 11, 2022 | International, Naval
If the Navy wants its future combatants to succeed in a missile-to-missile fight, engineers need to leave significant space and power margins for future radars, directed-energy weapons and large-missile launchers.
November 12, 2021 | International, Aerospace
Boeing is pulling out all the stops to convince Canada that the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is the right future fighter, over the F-35A and Gripen E.
June 25, 2020 | International, Naval
June 18, 2020 - Austal Limited (ASX:ASB) is pleased to announce that the United States Department of Defense has awarded Austal USA a modification to a previously awarded Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) contract. The modification provides Austal with a total potential additional value of US$43,362,000 (approx. A$62,700,000). Work is expected to be complete by June 2021. The contract modification exercises options for LCS Class design services, material to support LCS Class design services and the US Navy's Integrated Data Product Model Environment (IDPME). Austal will provide LCS Class design services to all LCS ships and services may include program management, fitting out services, change processing, software maintenance, engineering and lifecycle efforts. Austal will also maintain an IDPME that shall enable Navy access to enterprise LCS data management. This ASX announcement has been approved and authorised for release by David Singleton, Austal Limited's Chief Executive Officer. -ENDs- Media Contact: Cameron Morse +61 433 886 871 cameron.morse@fticonsulting.com FURTHER INFORMATION Contact: Austal Phone: 61 8 9410 1111 Fax: 61 8 9410 2564 Email: media@austal.com View source version on Austal Limited: https://www.austal.com/news/austal-usa-awarded-us43m-lcs-contract-modification
November 28, 2018 | International, Aerospace
Nikkei staff writers TOKYO -- Japan is preparing to order another 100 F-35 stealth fighter jets from the U.S. to replace some of its aging F-15s, according to sources. The plan can be considered a response to China's military buildup, as well as a nod to U.S. President Donald Trump's call for Tokyo to buy more American defense equipment. Japan already intended to procure 42 of the new fighters. A single F-35 costs more than 10 billion yen ($88.1 million), meaning the additional order would exceed 1 trillion yen. Japan's government plans to approve the purchase when it adopts new National Defense Program Guidelines at a cabinet meeting in mid-December. It will also include the F-35 order in its medium-term defense program, which covers fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2023. The government wants to obtain 42 F-35s as successors to its F-4s by fiscal 2024. The 42 fighters Japan originally planned to buy are all F-35As, a conventional takeoff and landing variant. The additional 100 planes would include both the F-35A and F-35B, which is capable of short takeoffs and vertical landings. At present, Japan deploys about 200 F-15s, roughly half of which cannot be upgraded. The Defense Ministry wants to replace the planes that cannot be upgraded with the 100 F-35s, while enhancing and retaining the remaining F-15s. To accommodate the F-35Bs, the government intends to revamp the Maritime Self-Defense Force's JS Izumo helicopter carrier to host the fighters. Japan's neighbors are busy introducing their own advanced military aircraft. China deployed its homegrown J-20 stealth fighter in February, and by 2030 some experts expect the country to build a fleet of more than 250 fifth-generation jets -- as the latest generation of fighters like the F-35 is known. Russia, too, is expected to introduce its fifth-generation Sukhoi Su-57 in 2019, at the earliest. To keep up, Tokyo believes it is imperative to significantly increase its procurement of the most sophisticated stealth jets. At the same time, Trump has repeatedly urged Japan to purchase more American hardware and reduce the trade imbalance between the countries. Buying more of the high-priced fighters is a quick way to do that. In September, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Trump, "Introducing high-performance equipment, including American [materiel], is important for our country to strengthen its defense capabilities." https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-Relations/Japan-to-order-100-more-F-35-fighters-from-US