$100M contract awarded to upgrade special ops comms

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  11 avril 2024 | International, Terrestre

  Without change, US Navy’s future fleet looks too ambitious for industry

  Opinion: For industry to execute the plans in the Future Years Defense Program, major improvements will have to take place.

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  10 août 2020 | International, Terrestre

  Government watchdog warns of cost and technical risk for next-gen combat vehicle effort

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Government Accountability Office is warning the Army its approach to cost estimates and technical development for its Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program is risky and should be amended, according to an August 6 report. The Army has already struggled to get the OMFV program, intended to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, off the ground, canceling its previous solicitation to compete after receiving just one bid from General Dynamics Land Systems last fall. And GAO, in its report, is concerned that the service's newest attempt to get after delivering an OMFV comes with risk because the program documentation “does not clearly communicate the uncertainty associated with projected costs” and limits the program's “ability to gather the knowledge to effectively mitigate risk associated with system design maturity.” For one, the Army has come up with a singular cost estimate for the life-cycle of the program rather than a range of potential costs that takes uncertainty into account, according to the report. The OMFV program cost estimate, the report notes, is roughly $46 billion in fiscal 2019 dollars. “Our past work has determined that a point estimate alone is insufficient for managers to make informed decisions about the cost of a program,” the GAO writes. “For informed decisions, the cost estimate must reflect a degree of uncertainty, typically achieved through an uncertainty analysis, so that level of confidence can be given about the estimate.” For example, the OMFV program will be optionally manned, “which adds complexity and unknowns to the design as no vehicle like this currently exists in the Army's ground vehicle fleet,” the GAO said. “But the uncertainty surrounding this complex design is not reflected in the point estimate.” And because of this “decision makers are left making choices without a clear understanding of the impact on costs and may not be able to accurately budget for the program,” the report states. The constrained development schedule for OMFV is also a cause for concern as it inevitably drives risk into the program. GAO notes the Army had laid out, in its previous solicitation, a plan to design and demonstrate an OMFV prototype in three years and three months, but has since spread the schedule out a bit more with the relaunch of the program and now plans to complete system development and prototype demonstration in “close to” five years. The new solicitation also lays out a five-phase effort that will allow the Army to reassess the process at certain checkpoints throughout development, according to the report. The GAO also found promise in the Army's plan to use a modular open systems architecture to incorporate incremental upgrades. In the Army's previous plan for OMFV it also planned to use a mix of existing and new technologies but, the GAO report states, the program did not include plans to complete an independent technology readiness assessment until it was approaching a production decision. According to the Office of the Under Secretary for Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, in a report to Congress, “the least mature technology for OMFV had only been demonstrated at the component level in a laboratory environment,” the report notes, adding that the level of technology maturity would require “significant” additional development before it could be added to a weapon system. “The Army is maturing, or has plans to mature, individual technologies to a level lower than the threshold recommended by leading practices before beginning system development,” the report says. “This creates a danger of limited insight into key technology risks.” Critical technologies, GAO states, should be demonstrated in “an operational or realistic environment — not simply in a relevant environment — prior to their incorporation into a system design to ensure that they work as intended for the end-user.” The GAO adds, based on past experience, that without proving out technology at that level, the Army risks the possibility that new capabilities won't work as planned and will require further maturation, which results in schedule slips and rising costs. In the previous competition, OMFV didn't hold a systems engineering design review before beginning system development and the Army canceled the solicitation “in part due to the conclusion that contractors could not complete a system design that met requirements within the given schedule,” the report notes, which “illustrates the risk of beginning system development without conducting a systems engineering design review.” Program officials told the GAO that the program office and requirements developers “may have misjudged the ability of contractors to integrate the desired technology within the given schedule.” The GAO recommends the Army secretary direct the OMFV program office to include a range of cost estimates to support a range of possible outcomes as well as conduct systems engineering reviews at key decision points. The report also lays out similar findings on the Mobile Protected Firepower program, which is heading into competitive prototype testing this summer. General Dynamics Land Systems and BAE Systems are competing to build the new light tank for Army infantry. The GAO recommended the Army should ensure the MPF program also include a range of cost estimates that account for uncertainty. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/06/government-watchdog-warns-of-cost-and-technical-risk-for-next-gen-combat-vehicle-effort/

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  29 avril 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Australia Makes Moves to Grow its Defense Industry

  By Stew Magnuson GEELONG, Australia — Very little excites the aerospace industry and the media that covers it more than the announcement of a new jet fighter program. So when the curtain went up in a Boeing tent at Avalon — The Australian Air Show revealing a full-size model of a new robotic jet fighter, the camera flashes popped off as if it were a star on a Hollywood red carpet. “It is a red letter day,” Australian Minister of Defence Christopher Pyne said while standing in front of the Airpower Teaming System, Boeing's name for the loyal wingman jet fighter, an unmanned aircraft intended to fly in formation with the nation's F-35A joint strike fighters and F/A-18E/F Super Hornets. It was also an auspicious day because the unmanned system would be the first indigenously developed aircraft Australia produced since the CAC Boomerang fighter during World War II. The program makes a statement to the world that Australia is no longer content to be merely a buyer of military equipment, but has ambitions to be a developer and exporter as well, said Pyne. “This is all testament to the fact that we are undergoing our largest buildup of our military capability in our peacetime history — $200 billion over the next 10 years.” While Australia is still buying pricey F-35s from the United States, attack-class submarines from France and armored fighting vehicles from a European consortium, it wants a significant portion of that $200 billion to stay in the country and help it create aerospace and defense sector jobs, officials said. The nation last year released the 2018 Defense Industrial Capability Plan spelling out how it would build a “broader and deeper defense industrial base” over the next decade. “The government's goal by 2028 is to achieve an Australian defense industry that has the capability, posture and resilience to help meet Australia's defense needs,” the plan stated. One of its main goals is to turn the nation into an exporter of military goods rather than just an importer. The day before the airshow, U.S. and other foreign contractors gathered in nearby Melbourne to hear from State of Victoria and Defence Ministry officials about the new ways of doing business in Australia. Damien Chifley, executive director of the defense industry branch in the Australian Department of Defence, said the approach now is to partner. The country's defense contractors are predominantly medium to small companies who can't go it alone. They need help bringing their innovative ideas to prime contractors. If a U.S. or other foreign company wants to vie for an Australian contract it must now submit an “industry capability plan,” which spells out exactly how they will work with local firms to bring the project to fruition, Chifley said. “The idea is they go out the main gate with Australian industry,” he said. These plans are not offsets, which is the mechanism used by some nations to make contractors invest a certain amount of dollars in the local economy as a condition of winning a contract. However, these industry capability plans will be weighed by the contracting authority when selecting a winning proposal, he noted. Claire S. Willette, CEO of the Australian Defence Alliance, said in an interview that the nation's effort to bolster its aerospace and defense sector should be seen in light of its losses in manufacturing jobs — particularly the automotive industry — rather than security concerns. Australia wants a “sovereign capability to support itself” in the defense industrial sector, she said. “From a long-term sustainable economic perspective, you need to build something. You need to have a growth area,” said Willette, an American who served in the Pentagon for 20 years before moving to Australia. “Because we did have this burgeoning defense industry and because we have some really niche, high-tech areas of excellence, I think that [the government] saw that this was a natural fit and something they could grow off of,” she said. Australian government officials and locally based U.S. contractors at the airshow were eager to promote the nation as a spot where they can find the talent to develop programs. Boeing, by far, has the largest and longest presence with more than 90 years experience doing business in the country and some 5,000 employees in its defense and commercial sectors. It features two large research facilities — Boeing Research and Technology-Australia and Boeing Phantom Works International in Brisbane — where work on the robotic jet fighter will take place. The company invested $62 million in research and development in Australia in 2018, company officials said. “We're going to prove that we can do big, audacious programs like this here in Australia,” said Darren Edwards, vice president and managing director of Boeing Defence Australia. Meanwhile, Lockheed Martin and local officials touted the country's success in winning F-35 sustainment contracts. As a partner nation in the program, Australian contractors can compete globally with other F-35 customers for component maintenance contracts. They received 343 out of a possible 388 such contracts in the latest round, building on the 64 they had received in the first round. Australian contractors have received a total of $1.3 billion in F-35-related contracts so far, said Royal Australian Air Force Air Vice-Marshal Leigh Gordon, head of the joint strike fighter division. “That is a really great example of the strength of Australian industry and its competitiveness in the global sphere,” Gordon said. Going hand in hand with Australia's ambitions in the defense realm is its renewed focus on space. In July 2018, it established the Australian Space Agency, which brought together about 11 different agencies spread out within the government at various ministries, said Kim Gina Ellis, senior lecturer on space industry engagement, governance and law at Swinburne University of Technology in Victoria. The government wants a central point to coordinate and bring all the civilian activities together, she said. Again, the long-term goal is job creation, she told National Defense. The government wants to add about 20,000 to the approximately 10,000 space sector jobs already in Australia, she said. Meanwhile, as is the case in the United States, the nation has a growing private sector launch industry with a handful of companies building small rockets and launch facilities for small satellites, she said. Along with telescopes and communications systems that have been positioned on the continent since the beginning of the space age, Australia features a favorable geographic location for inserting spacecraft into polar orbits, Ellis noted. The new agency will “help build the industry and show the rest of the world that we have these amazing capabilities and that we support most of the major space exploration programs,” Ellis said. Jeff Shockey, vice president of global sales and marketing for Boeing Defense, Space and Security, said in an interview that Australia is growing very close to investing 2 percent of its GDP in defense. “They are doing the right things. There is a lot going on down here in this region and they are at the forefront.” Boeing has ambitions to export the Airpower Teaming System to the other “five-eye” partners: the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. Shockey said Boeing is an international company and Australia is an enduring ally and partner. Building a new jet fighter outside the United States should not be seen as “off-shoring” work, he said. “We're a global company and we're doing work throughout the enterprise on this project and others, both domestically and abroad,” he said. “There is a great high-tech talent base here,” he added. And the wide-open spaces will be a perfect proving ground for unmanned aircraft, Shockey and other company executives said. Willette said: “We're never going to have the assembly lines for an F-18, an F-16 or a JSF, but we do have the componentry, the systems and the systems integration and the skilled engineering. Designing and fabrication and machining — and the professional services that back all that up — those are huge strengths for this country.” The government has several new programs to spark innovation that would be recognizable to the U.S. defense industry. It is setting up grand challenges, cooperative research centers, university research networks and small business research grants. It has what would be called in the U.S. “broad agency announcements” with pots of money dedicated over the next 10 years for organizations with ideas in fields such as intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance, electronic warfare, cybersecurity, amphibious warfare, maritime and anti-submarine warfare, and air and sealift. The 2018 Defense Industrial Capability Plan was just one building block in a larger plan, said Willette. The Australian government is continuing to produce more policies surrounding manufacturing skills and science, technology engineering and math education. “Having a level of sovereignty, and integrity and resiliency in your supply chain is incredibly important from a national security perspective,” Willette added. The ideas for the new programs are based on long-established U.S. or U.K. acquisition programs, said a government official who was not authorized to speak on the record. The Australian government is keen to partner with U.S. universities and has established the Australia-U.S. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Program to help Australian schools establish themselves with the Pentagon's Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative. It will provide Australian colleges with grants of up to 1 million Australian dollars per year if they can team with U.S. counterparts in the MURI program. Willette said: “The message very clearly coming from Australia is: ‘partner with us.'” http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2019/4/29/australia-makes-moves-to-grow-its-defense-industry