Arms firms fret over delays in Franco-German fighter project

Sur le même sujet

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  17 décembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre

  Bell’s V-280 Valor hits 200 hours of flight time 3 years after first flight

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Bell's technology demonstrator designed to show the Army the realm of the possible in Future Vertical Lift capability has flown 200 hours since its first flight three years ago, according to Keith Flail, the company's executive vice president for advanced vertical lift systems. The V-280 Valor tiltrotor parted ways with the tarmac for the first time on Dec. 18, 2017, at 1:59 p.m. CDT at a Bell facility in Amarillo, Texas. Defense News reported the flight as the aircraft was still in the air, but the aircraft logged roughly 15 to 20 minutes before returning to solid ground. Since then Bell's clean-sheet-designed aircraft has flown more than 150 sorties, Flail told Defense News in a recent interview, and the extensive effort has driven down risk for the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft program for the U.S. Army. Valor hit the 200 flight hour mark on Dec. 4, Flail said. The Army wants to field FLRAA — an aircraft expected to fly twice as fast and twice as far as a conventional helicopter — by 2030. Bell is gearing up to compete head-to-head with a Lockheed Martin's Sikorsky and Boeing team, which built the only other flying technology demonstrator in the effort leading up to a program of record. The SB-1 Defiant coaxial helicopter flew for the first time in March 2019 after struggling with rotor blade manufacturing problems and working through other more minor kinks. Both companies have entered a competitive development and risk reduction phase awarded in March 2020 ahead of the FLRAA program. The Army announced this month that it intends to proceed into a competition between just Sikorsky-Boeing and Bell to produce FLRAA. Valor has been put through its paces, completing key performance parameters and continuing to prove out possible threshold and objective requirements for FLRAA. The aircraft had its first public flight in June 2018 where it reached cruising speeds of 195 knots and was put through its paces in hover mode. In May 2019, the aircraft completed low-speed agility maneuver testing — which made up the final key performance parameters left to prove out with the system as part of the technology demonstration phase. Valor flew autonomously for the first time a year ago. The aircraft performed an autonomous takeoff, conversion into cruise mode, precision navigation to various waypoints, loiter maneuvers, conversion into vertical-takeoff-and-landing mode, and landed autonomously. Other achievements include demonstrating an integrated system from Lockheed Martin that provides the pilots and aircrew a 360-degree view through the skin of the aircraft in the spring of 2019. And in early 2020, Bell also integrated the Tactical Common Data Link and transmitted information between Valor and the ground station to include basic flight data and showed it would be able to provide targeting information to help long-range precision fires weapons hit targets more accurately, according to a Dec. 17 company statement. In the same flight, Bell demonstrated sling-load capability, Flail said. “During a single sortie, the team performed multiple cargo lifts to demonstrate the procedure and coordination of ground crew, aircraft, crew chief, pilots and the behavior of the loads for the V-280,” the statement notes. Over the course of the technology demonstration period, Flail added, the aircraft was also able to show its reliability and availability. “This configuration of tiltrotor really shows how robust it is in terms of reliability and availability because one of the tricks with proving that is you have to accumulate enough data to show that you do have a reliable system,” he said. “A lot of your critical items, your gearboxes and your blades ... those are typical cost drivers downstream and today, we still have the original six blades and gearboxes on this aircraft.” https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/12/17/bells-v-280-valor-hits-200-hours-of-flight-time-3-years-after-first-flight/

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  7 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  India looks to make $25B from defense production by 2025

  By: Vivek Raghuvanshi NEW DELHI — The Indian government on Monday introduced a new draft policy that sets a $25 billion defense production target, including making $5 billion from exports, by 2025. The Defence Production and Export Promotion Policy is meant to bolster local production of weapons and platforms by developing “a dynamic, robust and competitive” defense industry. The draft policy also said the Ministry of Defence will set up a technology assessment cell to assess industry's ability to design, develop, produce and re-engineer assembly lines to manufacture major systems such as armored vehicles, submarines, fighter aircraft, helicopters and radars. “The DPEPP 2020 is envisaged as overarching guiding to provide a focused, structured and significant thrust to defense production capabilities of the country for self-reliance and exports,” the MoD said. However, some defense experts and analysts are unimpressed with the draft policy. Amit Cowshish, a former financial adviser for acquisition with the MoD, said the DPEPP is high on rhetoric but low on specifics. India's current defense production turnover is about $11.42 billion. Of this, $9 billion comes from state-owned enterprises and ordnance factories, while the private sector accounts for $2.42 billion. From the total amount, $1.53 billion comes from export business. It disregards financial reality, which is grimmer now due to the rampant pandemic than was the case in the past,” Cowshish said, referring to the spread of the coronavirus that has hit economies worldwide. A more productive defense industry in India will depend on how much money the government can spare for local procurement as well as the availability of materiel in the domestic market — two factors that should be a matter of concern, particularly with export targets, according to Cowshish. Currently, India spends about $18.52 billion annually on weapons and platform purchases, out of which 60 percent is sourced from domestic companies, with remaining supplies coming from foreign vendors. About $11 billion of those appropriated funds go toward India's 50 state-owned laboratories focused on defense research and development, nine state-owned companies, and 41 ordnance factories. Conversely, private defense companies, including 3,500 micro and small enterprises, get a little over $2 billion from this. A CEO of a private defense company in India, speaking to Defense News on condition of anonymity, said the draft policy fails to provide “a clear road map and direction for streamlining defense procurement and production.” He argued that defense production will only improve if there's mutual trust, hand-holding, active participation and patience in the development process between the private and public sector. Senior executives at the state-owned enterprises Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Bharat Electronics Limited would not comment on the draft policy, saying they are not authorized by the government to comment on MoD policy issues. However, Venkatesh Damal Kannan, a former research and development director with Hindustan Aeronautics, said achieving the $25 billion target would be possible if the current capital allocation of $18.52 billion for purchasing weapons and platforms is doubled. There should also be a willingness from the Indian military to field a larger number of indigenous products, Kannan added, and improved bureaucratic processes in the MoD. However, Cowshish said the military's arms requirements should not be held hostage by efforts for indigenization. “In the meantime, especially in situations like the one we are faced with vis-a-vis China, there is no alternative to buying equipment, platforms, ammunition from abroad if what is needed is not available in India,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2020/08/06/india-looks-to-make-25-billion-in-defense-production-by-2025/

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  23 août 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  Le Tempest démarre avec l'Italie... et le Japon - Aerospatium

  Loin des contraintes politiques qui freinent son homologue franco-germano-espagnol, le Tempest a franchi une étape programmatique.