4 juillet 2024 | International, Aérospatial
Air defence focus in latest US military package for Ukraine - Army Technology
Washington has committed additional funding towards the provision of Patriot and NASAMS air defence interceptors for Ukraine.
14 décembre 2017 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
American exodus? 17,000 US defense suppliers may have left the defense sector
WASHINGTON — A large number of American companies supplying the U.S. military may have left the defense market, according to a study announced Thursday, raising alarm over the health and future of the defense industrial base.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies study said the number of first-tier prime vendors declined by roughly 17,000 companies, or roughly 20 percent, between 2011 and 2015.
The full study, due to be released in January, was authored by CSIS Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group Director Andrew Hunter, Deputy Director Gregory Sanders and Research Associate Rhys McCormick. It was sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School and co-produced by the Aerospace Industries Association, which released an executive summary on Dec. 14, the day of its annual aerospace and defense luncheon in Washington.
The authors, who used publicly available contract data, write that it's unclear — due to the limitations in the subcontract database —whether the companies have exited the industrial base entirely or still perform work at the lower tiers.
“There is no doubt that a huge portion of the recent turbulence in the defense industrial base has taken place among subcontractors, who are less equipped to tolerate the defense marketplace's funding uncertainly and often onerous regulatory regime — yet it remains extremely difficult to determine the real impact of these conditions on subcontractors,” the authors conclude.
Further details may yet be revealed by the Trump administration's ongoing review of the resiliency of the defense-industrial base. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' assessment is due to President Donald Trump by mid-April 2018.
The CSIS summary links 2011 Budget Control Act caps, subsequent short-term budget agreements, and Congress' “unpredictable and inconsistent” appropriations process to the “lost suppliers, changes in competition and market structure, and other turmoil” it found. The years 2011-2015 are considered a period of defense drawdown and decline.
The authors, rather than focus strictly on the total decline of defense contract obligations over the entire period, chose to chart the “whipsaw” effect that struck certain sectors of the industrial base amid the imposition of sequestration in 2013 and subsequent budget caps.
Though the defense budget had been declining in the years leading up to the Budget Control Act, the implementation of an across-the-board sequestration budget cut in 2013 “marked a severe market shock that had a considerable impact on the defense industry,” the authors say.
Compared to the pre-drawdown fiscal 2009-2010 period, the start of the drawdown in fiscal 2011-2012, average annual defense contract obligations dropped 5 percent. When sequestration was triggered in fiscal 2013, defense contract obligations dropped 15 percent from the previous year. Average annual defense contract obligations fell 23 percent during the so-called BCA decline period, fiscal 2013-2015.
The Army, which has a checkered modernization history, bore the brunt of the decline. Average annual defense contracts dropped 18 percent at the start of the drawdown, then 35 percent during the BCA decline period.
Missile defense contract obligations actually gained 7 percent at the start of the drawdown and then dropped only 3 percent under budget caps. During his presidency, Barack Obama reversed course from early cuts to missile defense to spur the development and deployment of missile defense systems in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
Lockheed Martin CEO Marillyn Hewson reacted to the internally circulated findings earlier this month, saying budget cuts are responsible for the industry being “more fragile and less flexible than I've seen it, and I've been in the industry many, many years.”
“What we've seen in the industry, I'll give you an example at Lockheed Martin: At the outset of budget cuts we were about 126,000 employees; today we are at 97,000 employees,” Hewson said at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. “Our footprint has shrunk dramatically. We see some of our small and medium-sized business, some of the components that we need, there's one, maybe two suppliers in that field where there were many, many more before.”
Budget cuts have squeezed the Defense Department to unduly prioritize low-cost contracts over innovation and investment. Cost “shootouts,” she said, are endangering the military's plans to grow in size and lethality.
AIA Vice President for National Security Policy John Luddy said companies have coped through a variety of “healthy efficiencies,” such as mergers and acquisitions, consolidating facilities, exploring shared services, and offloading certain contracting activities.
“Our companies have done an amazing job of managing the downturn, they've pulled all kinds of levels to make it work, they've shown the ingenuity of the American free market system,” Luddy said. “Nonetheless, the uncertainty of the budgeting process has become a huge challenge for us.”
Army Secretary Mark Esper, formerly of Raytheon, warned lawmakers at a Senate hearing Dec. 7 that uneven funding is driving small suppliers — “an engine of innovation” — out of the defense sector.
“If you're a small mom and pop shop out there, and I'm referring to my industry experience, it's hard for them to survive in the uncertain budgetary environment,” Esper said. “And we risk losing those folks who may over time decide that they're going to get out of the defense business and go elsewhere. So that's a big threat to our supply chains.”
But the CSIS study found that small vendors either increased their share of platform portfolio contract obligations or held steady, while large and medium vendors were most harmed by the market shock from sequestration and the defense drawdown.
Sur le même sujet
-
-
2 octobre 2019 | International, Terrestre
Pencils down: Bids are in to replace the US Army’s Bradley fighting vehicle
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The bids are in for a chance to build prototypes for the Army's Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle that will replace its Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle. Among them is a Raytheon and Rheinmetall team putting forward Rheinmetall's Lynx 41 Infantry Fighting Vehicle, and General Dynamics Land Systems, which showcased its Griffin III technology demonstrator equipped with a 50mm cannon a year ago at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual exposition. It is currently unknown if any other teams submitted bids by the service's set deadline of Oct. 1. None have come forward publicly despite rumors of a dark horse or two. Absent from the usual brood of combat vehicle manufacturers is BAE Systems. Defense News broke the news earlier this year that the company wouldn't compete in the OMFV competition. Textron has joined the Raytheon and Rheinmetall team with plans to, if chosen to build the new vehicle, build Lynx here in the United States at its Slidell, Louisiana, manufacturing facility. Raytheon and Rheinmetall announced a joint venture Oct. 1 — calling it Raytheon Rheinmetall Land Systems LLC — to pursue the OMFV competition. “General Dynamics Land Systems submitted our OMFV proposal and bid sample to the US Army on 27 September. GD's bid sample was purpose built to address the desired system lethality, survivability and mobility as substantiation of our response to the Army's request for proposal,” the company said in a statement sent to Defense News. The company did not provide details on the submission. GDLS did note, however, that it is proposing a “purpose built vehicle” using technologies from other platforms and “years of investment in advanced capabilities to include a 50mm cannon,” according to the statement. The Army released its request for proposals in March opening a competition to build prototypes. The service plans to choose from the pool of bidders up to two teams to build 14 prototypes each. The service will choose a winner that will start replacing Bradleys in 2026 that is designed to better operate in future environments that would allow soldiers to maneuver to a position of advantage and “to engage in close combat and deliver decisive lethality during the execution of the combined arms maneuver,” according to an Army statement issued along with the RFP release. Some of the threshold requirements for OMFV are a 30mm cannon and a second-generation, forward-looking infrared system, or FLIR. Objective requirements are a 50mm cannon and a third-generation FLIR. Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, who is in charge of Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) modernization efforts, said at the Defense News Conference in September that he is confident the requirements set for OMFV are right and had no plans to change them. The selected prototypes will go through “rigorous” operational testing and soldier assessments. The Army plans to downselect to one vehicle for low-rate initial production following the assessments and testing. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/10/01/pencils-down-bids-are-in-for-armys-bradley-fighting-vehicle-replacement
-
5 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
T-X competition to end in September with selection of new USAF trainer aircraft
2018-08-30 WILLIAM KUCINSKI Officials will soon award a 350-unit contract to one of three competing aircraft teams. According to officials, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) will select a new trainer aircraft by September 30 – before the end of the 2018 fiscal year. The aircraft will be one of the three remaining next-gen trainer candidates from the USAF's ongoing T-X competition, either the clean-sheet T-X from Boeing and Saab, the T-50A from Lockheed Martin and Korea Aerospace Industries, Ltd. (KAI), or the T-100 from Leonardo DRS. The USAF will replace its aging fleet of Northrop T-38 Talon supersonic jet trainers with 350 new aircraft from the T-X competition, spending approximately $16 billion to acquire and maintain the new trainers over the course of their service life – one of the largest USAF contracts in recent times. The seasoned T-38 has been in use since 1961, training nearly 50,000 pilots who would later fly aircraft like the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, McDonell Douglass F-15 Eagle, and Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II. However, as the USAF transitions employs more and more cutting-edge technologies, a next-gen trainer is needed to better facilitate fifth-gen fighter aircraft pilot training for the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and F-35 Lighting II. The winning T-X aircraft will serve as a platform to acclimate pilots to aircraft with extreme agility, full-sensor fusion, integrated avionics, supercruise, and consolidated and integrated battlespace management technologies. Industry analysts currently favor the Lockheed/KAI T-50A – based on KAI's T-50 trainer used by South Korea's Republic of Korea Air Force and co-developed by Lockheed Martin, manufacturer of the F-22 and F-35; and the Boeing/Saab T-X – which, as a completely new design – benefited from additional development time due to the T-X competition's repeatedly protracted award announcement. While speculation has floated that the T-X award announcement would occur during the Air Force Association's Air, Space & Cyber (ASC) Conference from Sept. 17-19, those close to the program hinted at a decision coming through the following week of Sept. 24. https://www.sae.org/news/2018/08/t-x-competition-to-end-in-september-with-selection-of-new-usaf-trainer-aircraft