23 novembre 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Russian Hackers Deploy HATVIBE and CHERRYSPY Malware Across Europe and Asia
Russia-linked TAG-110 hacks 62 victims across 11 nations using HATVIBE and CHERRYSPY malware.
9 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial
Air Force to give Sierra Nevada Corp. a sole-source contract for light-attack planes, but Textron will also get an award
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force on Wednesday stated its intent to sole source A-29 Super Tucanos from Sierra Nevada Corp. and Embraer. But a similar solicitation for Textron's AT-6 Wolverine will be forthcoming, an Air Force spokeswoman confirmed.
The Air Force intends to put out a final solicitation to the SNC-Embraer team this month and will award a contract by the end of the fiscal year, according to a May 8 notice on FedBizOpps.
“We expect a separate procurement action for the AT-6,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Defense News. Stefanek added that the service still intends to buy two to three of each aircraft for more experiments at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, and with the special operations community at Hurlburt Field, Florida.
Earlier this year, the Air Force acknowledged it was unprepared to move its light-attack experimentation effortinto a full-fledged program of record. Instead, the service kept both options — Textron's AT-6 and the SNC-Embraer A-29 — on the table and requested $35 million to continue testing the jets in fiscal 2020.
Some analysts and lawmakers have accused the Air Force of slow-rolling the program in an attempt to see it quietly canceled, despite congressional enthusiasm for buying new attack planes.
However, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein maintains that future experiments will help the Air Force narrow down light-attack capabilities that the service and foreign nations need. He has also said the service will be ready to make procurement decisions around the FY22-FY24 time frame.
“The United States Marine Corps has already said they're joining us,” Goldfein said in March. “We're going to invite allies and partners, and with the authorities you've given us now that we own those prototypes, we will continue to experiment to build the interoperable network that we've already advanced.”
According to the pre-solicitation, the light-attack aircraft “will provide an affordable, non-developmental aircraft intended to operate globally in the types of Irregular Warfare environments that have characterized combat operations over the past 25 years. Additionally, it will support Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) with the ability to accomplish its mission of Close Combat Air support to partner nations.”
The Air Force has said that funding for the initial AT-6 and A-29 buys will come out of the estimated $160 million in unspent funds that Congress appropriated for the effort in previous budgets. Congress has appropriated $200 million in total for the effort since it was announced in late 2016.
Sur le même sujet
-
-
1 mars 2019 | International, Sécurité, Autre défense
The Security Clearance Process Is About to Get Its Biggest Overhaul in 50 Years
By AARON BOYD The federal intelligence and human resources communities are preparing a coming out party for the first major update to the security clearance process in some 50 years. For the last year, the Suitability and Security Clearance Performance Accountability Council has been working on the Trusted Workforce 2.0 framework, the start of a wide-ranging effort to overhaul how background investigations are conducted. Representatives from the intelligence community, Defense Department, Office of Personnel Management, and Office of Management and Budget are leading PAC's efforts. Over the next two weeks, the team plans to debut the finalized framework to the White House and Congress and offered a group of reporters a first look at what's to come. This is the first time ever that the legislative and executive branches are on the same page with regard to clearance reform, according to Bill Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, who is leading the framework effort along with OPM Deputy Director Michael Rigas. The two agencies, along with members of the Defense Department, have been working to reduce the crushing backlog of security investigations, which topped 725,000 in early 2018. That backlog has since been reduced to 551,000 as of Monday. But that number is 100 percent above what security professionals consider to be the baseline “steady state” of 220,000 to 250,000 investigations in process at any given time. Key to continuing to decrease the backlog and get the average clearance timeline down below 80 days is a major process overhaul, Evanina and Rigas said. “We realized this is a really big elephant, so we have to take some small bites,” beginning with reducing the backlog, Evanina said. From there, beginning mid-summer, they began to look at the “blue sky perspective,” as Evanina put it: the high-level view of structural, procedural changes that needed to take place. Discussions focused on removing “friction” from the process, said Matt Eanes, director of the PAC program management office, whether by removing the need to vet minor things or allowing investigators to use digital methods. Full article: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2019/02/security-clearance-process-about-get-its-biggest-overhaul-50-years/155229/
-
13 juillet 2023 | International, Terrestre
Italy to buy Leopard combat tanks, upgrade Arietes
Four billion euros would be budgeted for the new buys from 2024.