June 25, 2019 | International, Naval
The US Navy is moving ahead with its frigate program but the ship design selected by Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia won't be considered as the Americans are only considering proven vessels.
Because the U.S. FFG(X) future frigate competition will only accept proven, at-sea designs, BAE Systems of the United Kingdom has decided not to enter its Type 26 Global Combat Ship in the competition, the U.S. Naval Institute's publication, USNI News, reports.
The Canadian government plans to buy 15 Type 26 warships in a project now estimated by the Parliamentary Budget Officer to cost $70 billion. The project, known as Canadian Surface Combatant, is the largest single expenditure in Canadian government history.
The Liberal government announced in February that it had entered into a contract with Irving Shipbuilding to acquire new warships based on the Type 26 design being built in the United Kingdom. With Canada ordering 15 of the warships, the Royal Canadian Navy will be the number one user of the Type 26 in the world.
The United Kingdom had planned to buy 13 of the ships for its Royal Navy but cut that down to eight. Australia plans to buy nine of the vessels designed by BAE.
But the Type 26 design is unproven. Construction of the first ship for the Royal Navy began in the summer of 2017 but that vessel is not expected to be accepted into service until 2025.
Canada hopes to begin construction of its first Type 26 in the early 2020s.
Alan Baribeau, a spokesman for U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command, told USNI News, the U.S. Navy requires a proven, in-the-water design for its future frigate program. “To promote and provide for full and open competition, the Navy will consider any hull form — foreign and domestic — that meets the requirements, will be built in a U.S. shipyard and has a parent design that has been through production and demonstrated (full scale) at sea,” Baribeau told USNI News.
The entry of the BAE Type 26 warship in the Canadian competition was controversial from the start and sparked complaints the procurement process was skewed to favour that vessel. Previously the Liberal government had said only mature existing designs or designs of ships already in service with other navies would be accepted, on the grounds they could be built faster and would be less risky. Unproven designs can face challenges as problems are found once the vessel is in the water and operating.
But the requirement for a mature design was changed and the government and Irving accepted the BAE design, though at the time it existed only on the drawing board. Company claims about what the Type 26 ship can do, including how fast it can go, are based on simulations or projections.
The two other bidders in the Canadian program had ships actually in service with other navies so their capabilities were known.
The Canadian Surface Combatant program is being run by Irving Shipbuilding to replace the navy's fleet of Halifax-class frigates and the Iroquois-class destroyers the navy previously operated.
The updated estimate on the surface combatant program, compiled by the Parliamentary Budget Office and released June 21, covers the cost of project development, production of the ships, two years of spare parts and ammunition, training, government program management, upgrades to existing facilities, and applicable taxes.
The previous Conservative government originally estimated the cost of the ships to be around $26 billion. The Department of National Defence now states that its estimate is between $56 billion and $60 billion.
BAE Systems told USNI News that it would not be submitting any proposals for the U.S. FFG(X) program unless the U.S. Navy dumps its requirements for a proven hull design. The U.S. does not have any intention of changing its requirements.
Four companies are expected to submit bids for the U.S. program– Austal USA, Fincantieri Marine, General Dynamics Bath Iron Works and Ingalls Shipbuilding – with deadlines of August 22 for technical proposals and September 26 for pricing proposals, the USNI News reported.
The Canadian Surface Combatant program is currently in the development phase. The government projects the acquisition phase to begin in the early 2020s with deliveries to begin in the mid-2020s. The delivery of the 15th ship, slated for the late 2040s, will mark the end of that project.
March 17, 2023 | International, Aerospace
Boeing Co said on Friday it had signed a contract with the U.S. army and international customers, including Australia, to build 184 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters.
August 25, 2020 | International, Aerospace
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has awarded 10 contracts worth a total of $29.75 million to companies to provide mature technologies in the realm of air-launched effects, or ALE, for future vertical lift aircraft that are expected to come online around 2030, service aviation officials have told Defense News. Raytheon, Alliant Techsystems Operations of Northridge, California, and Area-I of Marietta, Georgia, were awarded contracts to develop air vehicles. L3 Technologies, Rockwell Collins and Aurora Flight Services Corporation were awarded contracts to provide mission systems. And Raytheon, Leonardo Electronics US Inc., Technology Service Corporation of Huntsville, Alabama, and Alliant Techsystems Operations LLC of Northridge, California, received contracts to provide ALE payloads. Through ALE, the Army hopes to provide current and future vertical lift fleets with “the eyes and ears” to penetrate enemy territory while manned aircraft are able to maintain standoff out of range of enemy attack, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the Army's FVL modernization efforts, said in an exclusive interview with Defense News. “To do that, that has a whole host of capabilities embedded in it, and I would say it's not just the eyes and ears, but it's also, what we are finding, is the mouth, so our ability to communicate by bringing mesh network capabilities, by bringing an ability to hear in the electronic spectrum, and, again, the ability to collect in that spectrum so we can find, fix and finish on pacing threats,” he added. The Army plans to take these already technically mature capabilities through additional technology maturation, Col. Scott Anderson, the unmanned aircraft systems project manager for the Army's Program Executive Office for Aviation, said in the same interview. “We're looking for high technology readiness levels, so best of breed,” he said, “that we can buy and then we don't have to develop, spend a lot of developmental dollars getting ready to get out the door in a prototype.” The air vehicle, payloads and missions systems will all fit into a government-owned architecture by fiscal 2024. The service will first look at each major component of ALE individually, rather than as a whole system, to assess readiness, Anderson said. That will run through most of 2021. Then in 2022, the Army will take those capabilities and bring them together into a full system prototype working with Georgia Tech, which is helping the service write the underpinnings of the reference architecture, he added. In the final phase, the Army will integrate the system onto a platform, first targeting the Gray Eagle and AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. Ultimately the ALE capabilities to come out of the effort will be targeted for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) ecosystem, Anderson said. The Army is planning to field both FARA and a Future Long-Range Attack Aircraft (FLRAA) in the early 2030s. “We want to mature the [ALE] ecosystem and then have it ready to hand off to FARA in full bloom,” Rugen added. The Army has been looking at ALE since roughly late 2017, Rugen said, and has been working to refine the associated capabilities development documents for several years. Army Futures Command Commander Gen. Mike Murray signed an abbreviated capabilities development document in May. The service has been pleased with what it has seen so far in live prototype experimentation and physics-based modeling within the science and technology community and is prepared to move quickly on the effort, Rugen said. The Army selected Area-I's ALTIUS, the Air-Launched, Tube-Integrated Unmanned System, to launch from a rotary-wing test aircraft — a UH-60 Black Hawk — and was able to demonstrate the concept from a high altitude in August 2018. Then the service demonstrated the concept again during a ground robotic breach exercise at Yakima Air Base in Washington state in 2019 as well as a launch from a Black Hawk flying at a lower altitude — roughly 100 feet or less. In March, at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, the Army demonstrated multiple ALEs launched from a Black Hawk at very low altitudes to “maintain masking,” Rugen said. “We got our mesh network extended out to about 60 kilometers, so we were pretty happy with, again, the requirements pace and the experimentation pace with that.” The program will evolve beyond 2024 as the capability will align more closely with fitting into future formations. The Army could award future contracts to integrate the capability or could establish follow-on Other Transaction Authority contracts — which is the type of contract mechanism used for the 10 awardees that allows the Army to move faster to rapidly prototype. “We have the contractual mechanisms” to be “flexible and responsive,” which is key in a program like ALE, Joe Giunta, executive director of Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, said. Instead of looking for a vendor that could deliver every aspect of a system, “we can harvest from across multiple different vendors, who bring, if you will, the best characteristics,” Patrick Mason, the deputy PEO for Army Aviation, added. “Then as they merge into our government reference architecture and our open system approach, we are then able to bring those together to create a much more capable product,” he said, that “fits into the longer term on how we can modify that as technology comes along and we can ramp on increases in technologies as we get out into the '23, '24 time frame and then further into the future as we look out to FY30 and the fielding of FARA, FLRAA and the full establishment of the FVL ecosystem.” The Army released a notice to industry Aug. 12 looking for input on technology that could further advance the capability of ALE against sophisticated adversaries with plans to host an industry day in September. While the service will prototype mature technologies in the near term, Mason said, “when you look at the '25 and '26 time frame, there will be better technologies that are developed around the payload side of the house, advancements in air vehicles or advancements in the missions systems.” The RFI is “looking at the next increment that is out there as we move from now in 2020 to what we would have as a residual capability in '24 to what we could move to in 2030,” Mason said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/24/army-awards-air-launched-effects-contracts-for-future-helicopters/
November 13, 2019 | International, C4ISR, Security
By: Andrew Eversden The Department of Defense is working with a unnamed company to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerability discovered in a technology used by the Pentagon, the DoD's Deputy Chief CIO Michele Iversen said Nov. 12. Without going into specific detail, Iversen said the department is working to remove the product. “The company was compromised [and] had a big cybersecurity vulnerability,” said Iversen, speaking at Fifth Domain's annual CyberCon conference. “And we have seen bad things coming from those products, so we are looking at how to use our authorities ... [to] block those products or companies for national security systems.” This highlights a broader issue facing the DoD: how to protect its supply chain. To mitigate supply chain risk, Iversen said that she is working on a supply chain illumination tools. She said that these are useful because its made up of publicly available information that doesn't need any level of classification. Specifically, she said she's working on a decision support tool where she can expose a “bare minimum set of publicly available supply chain information.” “So when people are going to look and make their purchases, they have information available to them,” she said. She said, ultimately, she wants the DoD CIO's office to offer that tool as a service. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is also starting to develop cybersecurity tools. NIST's Jon Boyens, acting deputy chief of the computer security division, said that his team at the standards agency is working on a supplier inter-dependency tool “to look at different suppliers and their criticality” to allow for government to be more effective in asking for capabilities during the procurement process. “Industry is saying, ‘You know, we've invested in this but we're not getting any incentives' ... and so they're kind of looking for incentives for investing in technology,” said Boyens. Iversen said that technology research and development also presents its own attack surface with which it needs to grapple. If the research and development was done in a foreign country, that presents a unique set of threats. For example, Iversen pointed to back-up software being placed into a nuclear command-and-control system. “Maybe you just say anything where the R&D ... [is] done in those countries is just off limits,” Iversen said. “It just makes common sense. It's fixing stupid.” https://www.fifthdomain.com/smr/cybercon/2019/11/12/here-are-some-new-tools-coming-to-protect-the-supply-chain/