9 juillet 2020 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR

Army to award new contracts to support mobile comms units

The Army is awarding delivery orders to three vendors to support equipment for three Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced (ESB-E) units.

Specifically, the awards will support fielding of satellite baseband equipment, said Paul Mehney, director of public communications at Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical.

Expeditionary signal battalions support units that don't have organic communications capabilities. These groups could include military intelligence battalions, chemical battalions, engineering battalions or air defense artillery branches. The ESB-E aims to be more mobile and require less equipment in order to drop in, support units and move more quickly on the battlefield.

Overall, the vendors will be responsible for providing 48 baseband sets of equipment for each ESB-E formation.

“Due to aggressive initial fielding timelines, after the first six ESB-E formations are fielded, the program office intends to open baseband capability competition for future ESB-E needs,” Mehney said.

PacStar was recently awarded a contract to support the ESB-E program to provide its 400-Series modular platform to enhance tactical expeditionary communications, the company said in a July 7 release.

The 400-Series is lightweight allowing these smaller and expeditionary units to maneuver more quickly. It includes 128 GB RAM, virtual routing and the PacStar 463 Radio Gateway.

“Network modernization to meet warfighter needs and defense priorities is a core focus for the Army and across the DoD, and we are proud to support these efforts with PacStar 400-Series for ESB-E,” Peggy J. Miller, chief executive of PacStar, said in a statement. “With these solutions, ESB-E [Scalable Network Node] will get the smallest, lightest, modular tactical communications platform in the industry, which is part of our larger initiative to enable increased reliability and innovation for warfighters.”

The other vendors include Klas and DTECH, with all three supporting one ESB-E.

An additional delivery order for each vendor to a second ESB-E will be issued, meaning in the near future, each vendor will support two units a piece. After that, the Army will open up the contracts to competition.

This approach follows how the Army has been experimenting to date by providing similar, yet comparable equipment to several ESB-E's.

These companies have provided separate equipment to three units allowing the Army to gain useful feedback from units to see what they liked and disliked about the gear. This has allowed the Army to execute rapid prototyping and experimentation on a tighter timeline for making fielding decisions while providing equipment to soldiers in the interim.

The first two ESB-Es fielded include the 57th ESB-E at Fort Hood and the 50th ESB-E at Fort Bragg.

https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/2020/07/08/army-to-award-new-contracts-to-support-mobile-comms-units

Sur le même sujet

  • COVID-19′s fiscal impact might ironically strengthen national defense

    23 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

    COVID-19′s fiscal impact might ironically strengthen national defense

    By: Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis (ret.) As Congress and the White House cope with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic by passing multitrillion-dollar stimulus packages, many are already grappling with the thorny problem of how we'll eventually pay for the spike in spending. While no one ever wants to be a bill-payer, the defense industry is predictably first out of the blocks seeking immunity from any future cuts by trotting out its favorite weapon: fear. Don't be fooled by this tried-and-true tactic: The claim that any cuts to the defense budget will imperil defense is gravely mistaken. Without changes in the foreign policy we enact — and a rational reform of how we spend our defense dollars — our national security will continue to decay. First, the cold, hard economic reality: The damage done to our economy by the necessary measures federal and state governments have enacted to safeguard American lives has been breathtaking in its scope and severity. Some estimates suggest gross domestic product will contract this year by as much as 40 percent, and unemployment could balloon to 30 percent. To help stem the tide, Congress has already passed a $2 trillion stimulus package, with more yet to come. With an already massive national debt of $24 trillion, the combination of government spending and the loss of tax revenue is going to place serious pressure on future budgets for years to come. These bills will eventually have to be paid, and no area of the budget will be free from scrutiny — including defense. Though the Department of Defense should be funded to whatever level is required to ensure the ability of our armed forces to deter and, if necessary defeat any adversary that may seek to deprive our citizens of life or liberty, not all aspects of the status quo are helping keep us safe. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr recently co-wrote an article arguing that regardless of the financial strain imposed by the coronavirus stimulus bills, defense spending should be exempted. The reason, he says, is that the military today remains in a yearslong “free-fall” which “can't be fixed in a year or even four.” The last thing America's leaders should do when responding to the financial constraints imposed by the coronavirus, he concludes, is to “weaken the military.” His implications that military readiness has been in free fall because of inadequate spending and that any reduction in defense spending weakens the military are beliefs held by many — and are inaccurate for several key reasons. Clinging to forever wars might be the biggest. The DoD has to spend hundreds of billions annually to fight, maintain and prepare for subsequent deployments fighting the forever wars we've been waging for the better part of two decades. Congress has allocated more than $2 trillion in direct outlays since 9/11 to fight so-called emergency requirements of overseas contingency operations, or OCO, and we have incurred an additional $4 trillion in associated and long-term costs. For fiscal 2020 alone, we will spend upward of an additional $137 billion on these OCO wars. What is critical to understand, however, is that the perpetual continuation of these wars not only fails to improve our security — these fights negatively impact our ability to focus on and prepare for fighting adversaries that could one day pose an existential threat to us. The implications of this reality are considerable — and potential remedies can be of great help to our country. If President Donald Trump were to order an end to some or all of our unnecessary forever wars, we could instantly save more than $100 billion a year without cutting anything else in the defense budget. If we then conducted prudent and necessary reforms in how we manage research and development, procurement, and acquisition, and in shedding unnecessary or outdated expenditures, tens of billions of additional savings could be realized. Perhaps more importantly we could redirect much more focus and resources on training and professional education, which would enable the armed forces to better deter — and if necessary defeat — major opponents. Those two major changes alone would end the weakening of our military and materially contribute to strengthening its key capabilities — while lessening pressure on the federal budget. The financial pressures this coronavirus is already placing on our nation's finances is real, and its effects will be felt for years. We will have to make hard decisions in the days ahead on where we spend our limited resources. If we are wise, we can reduce how much we spend on defense while simultaneously increasing our military power. Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities. He retired from the Army in 2015 after 21 years in service that included four combat deployments. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/22/covid-19s-fiscal-impact-might-ironically-strengthen-national-defense/

  • Elbit Systems Partner, Hanwha, was Selected for the Australian Land 400 Phase 3 Project

    16 août 2023 | International, Terrestre

    Elbit Systems Partner, Hanwha, was Selected for the Australian Land 400 Phase 3 Project

    Elbit Systems is a key partner to Hanwa to deliver the Redback Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) under the Project.

  • Logos Technologies Awarded $6.7 Million Navy Contract for Infrared Wide-Area Sensor

    31 juillet 2020 | International, Naval

    Logos Technologies Awarded $6.7 Million Navy Contract for Infrared Wide-Area Sensor

    Fairfax, Va.— July 28, 2020 — Logos Technologies recently received approval to disclose that it has been awarded a $6.7 million contract from the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) to develop, deliver, and perform proof-of-concept flight tests on a wide-area motion imagery (WAMI) sensor. The sensor system will be called Cardcounter and is being developed to integrate onto the Navy and Marine Corps RQ-21A small tactical unmanned aircraft system (UAS). Cardcounter will be a missionized capability derived from Logos Technologies' BlackKite sensor. BlackKite is an ultra-lightweight WAMI prototype with infrared capability. “We see this contract as a major step for us, the Navy/Marines, and the warfighter in general,” said Doug Rombough, VP for Business Development at Logos Technologies. “In embracing miniaturized wide-area motion imagery systems for tactical UAS, the Department of Defense is taking a technology that has already proven itself on the battlefield with aerostats and providing the tactical commander with guardian angel-like overwatch.” BlackKite, upon which Cardcounter will be based, weighs fewer than 28 pounds, yet is powerful enough to image an area of more than 12 square kilometers (about 5 square miles) in coverage. Within that vast coverage area, sensor operators can detect and track all vehicles in real time. “There's nothing like BlackKite out there in the market today,” said Rombough. “It is a force multiplier in terms of enhanced situational awareness. The system catches and records the entire area in real time and streams multiple video ‘chip-outs' down to handheld devices on the ground.” Cardcounter will leverage BlackKite's high-performance, multi-modal edge processor, which can store six or more hours of mission data. With this technology, users can forensically analyze the recorded imagery to better contextualize what is currently unfolding in the real-time imagery, drawing connections between people, places and events. The initial $6.7 million award from NAVAIR will cover the development of two Cardcounter prototypes, with a planned delivery by the end of September 2020 and ready to begin flight testing on the RQ-21A Blackjack. NAVAIR Public Release 2020-514. Distribution Statement A – “Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited” About Logos Technologies Founded in 1996, Logos Technologies LLC is a diversified science, engineering and technology company specializing in the fields of advanced sensors, wide-area motion imagery, advanced analytics and processing of large, multisource datasets. Logos serves government customers, including the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community and Department of Homeland Security, as well as a range of customers in commercial and international markets. Learn more at www.logos-technologies.com. MEDIA CONTACT FOR LOGOS TECHNOLOGIES Susan Kerin, Director of Communications +1 703-237-6550 | View source version on Logos Technologies: https://www.logostech.net/logos-awarded-7-million-navy-contract-ir-wami-rq-21a/

Toutes les nouvelles