Japan's Defense Industry Faces Challenges as China Threat Looms

Sur le même sujet

• 

  10 juin 2022 | International, Terrestre

  From night vision to ground vehicles, Israeli firm Elbit eyes US expansion

  In a Breaking Defense interview, CEO of Elbit's US arm Raanan Horowitz describes diverse, aggressive push in the US.

• 

  5 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Drones Cleared For Take-Off As Govt Launches GARUD Portal To Ease Norms

  Waking up to the use of drones in its fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, the ministry of civil aviation and Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) have launched the GARUD portal. The platform will provide fast track exemptions to government agencies for using drones in their operations against the pandemic. GARUD or ‘Government Authorisation for Relief Using Drones' was developed by the National Informatics Centre in eight days. Providing exemptions to government agencies by changing Rule 160 of the Aircraft Rules, 1937, for easy and fast approvals for drone usage, any government department can apply for these exemptions on the GARUD platform. However, the government has also put restrictions on these exemptions. For instance, the government will provide permission to only battery-operated drones or remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs). Permission won't be granted to autonomous and fixed-wing RPAs. The order also makes the organisation responsible for ensuring safe operations of RPAs. Operations involving RPAs are to be conducted under the supervision of authorised entity while not risking lives, property, or any other aircraft. Moreover, the government has allowed all the government agencies to use either their own drones or use ones offered by third-party providers which are mostly startups. According to the rules, all the drones should have a valid unique identification number (UIN) or drone acknowledgement number (DAN) issued by the DGCA. The agency using the RPAs will have to update the details of the drone on DGCA's Digital Sky platform. Moreover, the drones shouldn't be weighing more than 25 KG and cannot pick up, drop or spray any substance. This provision leaves authorities to use these drones for surveillance. Other restrictions include no flight before sunrise and after sunset. The government also imposed a height limit of up to 200 metres for the drones. Besides surveillance, many drone startups in India are also looking to support the delivery of essentials. They are also being used to back on-ground medical staff. Pune and Silicon Valley-based FlytBase is offering drone services free to government officials until May 2020. Moreover, Hyderabad-based Marut Drones is delivering medicines and collecting blood samples. It has also been deployed to spray sanitizer in the city. Recently, the DGCA also allowed hyperlocal delivery provider Dunzo and Bengaluru-based drone maker Throttle Aerospace Systems to test their long-range drone delivery solutions. These startups are also expected to deliver grocery via drones in the near future. https://inc42.com/buzz/drones-cleared-for-take-off-as-govt-launches-garud-portal-to-simplify-norms/

• 

  1 décembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  What Do Pentagon Leaders Aim To Achieve Before Inauguration Day?

  Jen DiMascio November 30, 2020 What does the current Pentagon leadership team want to achieve with the time it has remaining before the Biden administration takes office in January? Aviation Week Executive Editor for Defense and Space Jen DiMascio answers: Pentagon Editor Lee Hudson put this question to Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's acquisition chief, during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Ascend conference on Nov. 18. According to Lord, she is focused on protecting the supply chain and helping the acquisition system adapt to acquire software. Lord is working to protect the supply chain in two primary ways: • One is to protect companies critical to national technologies from investment by adversaries. • The other is to protect the supply of rare metals used to make microelectronics. The Pentagon has been working with the U.S. government's Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews foreign transactions in the U.S. for national-security implications to “block or undo a lot of transactions” in which adversaries are buying critical U.S. technologies or real estate adjacent to military installations, Lord says. Rather, the Pentagon is trying to partner with companies that can help the U.S. increase its technological and economic security. To that end, the Defense Department is building an electronic marketplace that Lord compares to a dating app—to match clean investors with companies building defense technologies. “We've practiced this in some different one-off events,” Lord says, “but we are literally just going through federal paperwork right now to launch this in December.” A related matter is lessening the U.S. dependence on countries like China for rare minerals such as those used in the microelectronics industry. “COVID has shown us that we cannot have dependencies on non-allies and partners and makes sure that we get the supplies we need when we need them,” Lord says. The Pentagon has a real need for radiation-hardened micro-electronics for its space-industrial base and nuclear enterprise. “Although we developed over 50% of the intellectual property around micro-electronics domestically, the bulk of manufacturing and almost all packaging and testing are conducted offshore. That just does not lead us in a place where we have a secure and resilient microelectronics industrial base,” she explains. And finally, Lord aims to continue to roll out tools for the acquisition workforce to incorporate iterative software development into the way it works. “We know that, if you do software correctly, it's a constant iteration of development, production and sustainment,” she adds. “We don't want to be constrained by different budgets and get into too much [of an] administrative hurdle. We've tried to be very innovative on the business side.” https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/what-do-pentagon-leaders-aim-achieve-inauguration-day