Army to award new contracts to support mobile comms units

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  26 mars 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  COVID-19 Relief Bill Adds $10.4B For DoD; OKs Extending Gens. Goldfein, Lengyel & Raymond

  By THERESA HITCHENS on March 25, 2020 at 3:22 PM WASHINGTON: Congress is likely to approve almost $9.4 billion for the Defense Department to use to attack COVID-19 — a sum that includes direct operations and maintenance funding to the services, the National Guard and reserves. There is an additional $1 billion in the bill that may be made available for contracting under the TRICARE health care program — bringing the entire package to $10.4 billion. The DoD funding is part of the $2 trillion relief deal being beaten out between the White House and Congress, that includes significant assistance to the defense industry. “The administration's thinking about how to use the military has evolved substantially from the supplemental proposal the administration submitted just last week,” notes Mark Cancian, a defense budget expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In that proposal, DoD's funding consisted of an $8.3 billion transfer account. DoD would later decide where to put the money. In this bill, the amount has grown to $10.4 billion, and the destination accounts have been specified, though there is still a lot of uncertainty and slushy-ness.” According to the draft bill obtained by Breaking Defense, the biggest chunk goes to the Defense Health Program “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, domestically or internationally.” The program is allocated $3.8 billion, of which $3.4 billion is for operations and maintenance; $415 million is for research, development, test and evaluation. The funds will remain available until Sept. 30, 2020. The TRICARE funds are provided in a separate section, but will be available until Sept. 30, 2021. The Defense Working Capital Fund — which allows DoD to make investments in things like depot maintenance, transportation, and supply management in the near term and recoup the costs through future year pricing deals — gets $1.5 billion. The bill would add $160 million in O&M funding to the Army budget; $360 million to the Navy; $90 million to the Marines; and $155 million to the Air Force. Defense wide O&M funds would be pumped up by $828 million. The Army National Guard is set to receive $187 million in O&M dollars and the Army Reserve is allocated $48 million; the Air National Guard would receive another $76 million. The Army and Air National Guards also would receive a plus up of $750 million and $480 million respectively in military personnel funds. Apart from new funds, the draft bill would allow President Donald Trump to extend the tenure of Air Force Chief Gen. David Goldfein, Space Force Chief Gen. Jay Raymond, and National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Joseph Lengyel, among other military leaders set to retire — a move apparently made to avoid a change of hands during the current crisis. The extension can be for up to 270 days. Goldfein currently is set to retire in June. Raymond is doubled-hatted as chief of the Space Force and head of Space Command, but only for a year as mandated by the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act. Further, while DoD is given wide latitude to move the new money around to where it is needed, it specifically bans any funds being moved to fund Trump's southern border wall by preventing any transfer to DoD “drug interdiction or counter-drug activities.” Finally, Cancian noted that the language gives DoD “flexibility on contracts and contract decision authority.” The bill would allow DoD Secretary Mark Esper able to delegate authorities for emergency transactions at his discretion. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/03/covid-19-congress-likely-to-slate-9-4b-to-dod-for-response

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  1 juin 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  Volatus Aerospace Appoints OmniView Tech as its Canadian Distributor

  TORONTO, May 31, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Volatus Aerospace has appointed OmniView Tech as its exclusive distributor of the FIXAR vertical takeoff and landing…

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  7 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Lockheed-Raytheon’s deadlier F-Model Javelin anti-tank missile rolls into production

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Raytheon and Lockheed Martin's joint venture for the Javelin has completed production of its first F-Model of the shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon, meant to be more lethal against advanced armor and soft targets, the companies announced Wednesday. Though there's no contract for international customers yet, Poland could be in line to be the first. The European country recently completed negotiations with the U.S. to buy 180 Javelin missiles and 60 launchers for its paramilitary Territorial Defence Forces, launched in 2016 amid tensions with Russia. “I believe that the Poland case actually hasn't been determined which way it's going to go yet, so they could make the F-Model available to them, or they could take the E-Models out of stock,” said Javelin Joint Venture Vice President Dave Pantano. “That would be up to the government-to-government process to make that determination.” The weapon's final assembly takes place in Troy, Alabama, with 511 in the first lot and deliveries to U.S. government set for this fall. The new model, also known as FGM-148F, has an advanced multipurpose warhead that combines charges to defeat explosive-reactive armor, and it has a fragmenting steel case for striking unarmored and lightly armored targets, according to the team. Its new command launch unit boasts a reduction in weight and an improved target tracker. “The warhead now combines multiple effects into one,” Pantano said. “It multiplies fragmentation, as well as the standard high-explosive anti-tank [charge]. So now the war fighters are prepared for any mission, without having to switch out different rounds for different targets.” Taiwan drew an immediate protest from China last year when the former asked to purchase more than 100 tanks from the U.S., along with air defense and Javelin systems. (Several kinds of Chinese-made tanks have been reportedly seen with explosive-reactive armor.) European allies with an eye on Russian armored vehicles are likely to be interested in the F-Model, according to James Hasik, a defense industry analyst and senior research fellow at George Mason University. “This is definitely about Russian armor. The Javelin is, by all accounts I've heard, a great weapon, but recent developments in active protection systems may lend some concern for its continued ability to reliably destroy tanks. I'd encourage any defense ministry in Europe, but especially those along the eastern frontier, to buy a lot of those or a similar weapon," Hasik told Defense News. “I should also note that the dual-purpose warhead is a welcome feature. The infantry ideally should have a single weapon for engaging multiple types of target. That's less essential with other arms, which may have a few more seconds to think about how to react, and more carrying capacity for multiple types of weapons.” The U.S. announced April 2 that it delivered 128 anti-tank Javelin missiles to Estonia. Polish Defence Minister Mariusz Błaszczak announced in a tweet last month that talks to buy Javelins were complete and that Warsaw was working to get more light anti-tank missiles. “This is not the end of strengthening these abilities,” he said. Days earlier, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency announced that Poland was cleared to buy the Javelin missiles and 79 command launch units for $100 million. The sale will help Poland “build its long-term defense capacity to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity,” DSCA said. Domestically, the Pentagon last year awarded the joint venture a production contract for 2,100 F-Model missiles after passing qualification tests. The full-rate production agreement for the FGM-148F replaced the FMG-148E (Block 1). The president's fiscal 2021 budget request in February asked Congress for $210 million, or 773 Javelin missiles for the Army and 98 for the Marine Corps; that's up from the $163 million Congress enacted in FY20. In October, the U.S. Army delayed plans to integrate the Javelin atop the Stryker combat vehicle over problems were discovered in connecting the weapon to the vehicle's remote weapons station. The Army also plans to mount a 30mm cannon on the vehicle. Officials with the joint venture expect to restart the Stryker efforts this summer or early fall. Also last year, an Estonian robot at Redstone Arsenal Test Center in Alabama test-fired the missile using a Kongsberg remote launcher on an unmanned ground vehicle. The Titan unmanned ground vehicle was built by Qinetiq North America and the Estonian company Milrem Robotics. https://www.defensenews.com/2020/05/06/deadlier-f-model-javelin-antitank-missile-rolls-into-production/