19 septembre 2024 | International, Terrestre
Rheinmetall unveils UK’s upgraded Challenger 3 battle tank
The Challenger 3 with the Ajax fighting vehicles and Boxer infantry vehicles form the centerpieces of British efforts to modernize land forces.
3 août 2018 | International, C4ISR
Army, NASA Want Laser Micro-Satellites For 50 Times The Bandwidth
It was hard enough keeping the data flowing to the far mountains of Afghanistan, but at least the Taliban didn't have the technology to attack the network. Russia and China, however, are investing heavily in capabilities to eavesdrop on or jam the radio transmissions and to blind or outright shoot down the satellites.
ASSOCIATION OF THE US ARMY, ARLINGTON: War zones, it turns out, get crappy reception. But the Army, NASA, and multiple private companies are looking to optical communications — that means lasers — off affordable micro-satellites that could dramatically increase bandwidth. Just this morning, the federally funded Aerospace Corporation announced a successful test for NASA that provided bandwidth 50 times higher — an almost 5,000 percent increase — than current military satellites that use radio waves.
Bassett: Military Necessity
Not three hours before the Aerospace Co. announcement, Maj. Gen. David Bassettwas getting excited about optical satellites at the Association of the US Army's annual cyber and networks conference here. That matters because, after a successful tour in charge of armored vehicle programs, Bassett is now the Army's Program Executive Officer for Command, Control, Communications – Tactical (PEO-C3T).
Currently, Bassett said, during a typical exercise at the Joint Readiness Training Center, meant to depict realistic combat conditions, an Army brigade HQ gets a satellite link that can transmit two megabits a second. By comparison, he said, one of his fellow panelists, Forcepoint Federal CTO George Kamis, had just clocked his smartphone at 70megabits per second. That's 35 times the power the 4,000-soldier brigade gets, for just one person.
“We have to provide more bandwidth to a headquarters than Mr. Kamis has in his pocket,” said Bassett.
Full article: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/army-nasa-want-laser-micro-satellites-for-50-times-the-bandwidth
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30 avril 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR
US makes it cheaper for foreign nations to buy American weapons
By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON ― The Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced this week that it is reducing a surcharge on American defense goods sold abroad from 3.5 percent to 3.2 percent, effectively dropping the price foreign nations have to pay when buying weapons through the Foreign Military Sales system. The change will go into effect June 1. The funding from the surcharge is used to support the FMS process, by which the U.S. government acts as the go-between for industry and a foreign customer, using the American acquisition system. The announcement comes days after the Trump administration rolled out a new set of guidelinesfor conventional arms transfers and unmanned systems as part of a broader push to increase American weapon sales abroad. The U.S. sold $41.9 billion in arms through the FMS process in fiscal 2017, per a DSCA statement. Based on that figure, the U.S. took in roughly $1.46 billion through the 3.5 percent surcharge. Reducing it to 3.2 percent would drop that number to around $1.34 billion. DSCA head Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper tied the surcharge cut directly to that broader goal, saying in the announcement that the change “will immediately reduce the cost of doing business for our international partners.” “It demonstrates the Department of Defense's commitment to charge only what is needed in order to support the administration of the FMS program which includes the sale of defense articles, defense services, and military training,” Hooper added. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/04/27/us-makes-it-cheaper-for-foreign-nations-to-buy-american-weapons/
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3 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Missile Defense Agency to inject competition into homeland missile defense contract
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Missile Defense Agency plans to hold a competition that could split up the work among contractors to modernize and sustain America's missile defense system, which is designed to destroy intercontinental ballistic missile threats. Boeing has held the development and sustainment contract for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense systems in place at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. Boeing's contract is set to expire in 2023. The GMD system is made up of more than 44 Ground-Based Interceptors buried in silos in the ground along with ground control stations, detection and fire control systems, and other support infrastructure. Boeing received a sole-source $6.6 billion award in 2018 to build a new silo and 20 more GBIs, as well as to sustain the system. But Vice Adm. Jon Hill, the MDA's director, told an audience in March at an Association of the U.S. Army event that “we know that contract is not giving us everything that we need for the future, so we are going to compete that contract downstream.” The agency is working to develop a Next-Generation Interceptor that would replace the current GBIs with more capable interceptors. Its plan to upgrade the GBI's exoatmospheric kill vehicle with a redesigned version was canceled in 2019 due to technical problems. Rather than rework that program, the agency decided to design an entirely new interceptor and stop building new GBIs. A request for proposals for the NGI is due imminently. But along with a new NGI, “we are going to make sure that ground systems, sensors and fire control, all the rest of the system, we have the opportunity to inject that competition because I think that is very important,” Hill said. The MDA previously considered splitting up the contract several times, believing that would reduce cost and create efficiency in the program, but nothing materialized toward that goal. This time, the MDA has released two requests for information with the possibility of splitting up the contract. The most recent RFI was posted on Beta.Sam.Gov in March. “I will tell you that our lead system integrator does a great job today and the partnerships with industry within that construct do a great job, but we think that it's so large and complex we should be doing everybody a favor by being able to split that up without losing the integration among all those pieces,” Hill said, “so our intent is to move in that direction.” The agency “is exploring different approaches for fulfilling the GMD Program Element requirements. Acquisition approaches under consideration range from an award of multiple contracts to execute segments/missions of the program scope to a single contract to execute the entirety of the program scope,” the RFI states. “Essential to all of the acquisition approaches under consideration is the establishment of an enduring arrangement strategy for the execution of the [Weapon Systems Integration (WSI)] functions across the program lifecycle, either under a single prime contract, or as one of the multiple contracts.” The RFI lays out a possible plan to split up the contract into five pieces. One contractor would provide the NGI, which is being addressed through a separate request for proposals. Another would be responsible for legacy and future ground systems, and another for sustaining the existing GBIs. And a company would operate the weapon system along with military operators and would run fleet maintenance scheduling and deconfliction, site operations, test support, and depot and parts management, the RFI lays out. Lastly, a contractor would serve as the weapon systems integrator, making it responsible for overall GMD integration “including physical and logical integration of the GMD components, GMD system and MDA enterprise level integration, planning and execution of all necessary testing to verify and validate overall requirements compliance,” the RFI states. Responses to the RFI are due April 10. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/04/02/missile-defense-agency-to-inject-competition-into-homeland-missile-defense-contract/