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  22 mai 2020 | International, C4ISR

  DoD selects industry partner to embed AI into programmes and systems

  21st May 2020 - 10:21 GMT | by The Shephard News Team Booz Allen Hamilton will deliver AI-enabled products to the US Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) under a $800 million contract from the GSA Federal Systems Integration and Management Center. If all options are exercised, work will be completed in May 2025. AI tools will support warfighting operations and be instrumental in embedding AI decision-making and analysis at all tiers of DoD operations. Booz Allen Hamilton will oversee a mix of technical services and products across the full spectrum of technical support to the JAIC Joint Warfighter National Mission Initiative. Work will include data labelling, data management, data conditioning, AI product development and the transition of AI products into new and existing fielded programmes and systems across the DoD. According to the DoD, the overall aim is to leverage the power of data to enable a ‘transformational shift across the DoD that will give the U.S. a definitive information advantage to prepare for future warfare operations'. https://www.shephardmedia.com/news/digital-battlespace/dod-selects-industry-partner-embed-ai-programmes-a/

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  14 août 2018 | International, Naval

  Fincantieri bulks up with acquisition ahead of Naval Group partnership

  By: Tom Kington and Pierre Tran ROME and PARIS — Italian shipyard Fincantieri has bought a key Italian technologyfirm to gain extra clout ahead of a planned team-up with France's Naval Group. State-controlled Fincantieri said Aug. 7 it was jointly taking control of Vitrociset, which employs 800 people and posted 2017 sales of €187 million (U.S. $211 million) from its training and support work in the defense, security, transport and space sectors. The shipyard will take over Vitrociset's defense work, while its partner in the purchase, Italian firm Mer Mec, will assume control of its civil work. That leaves Fincantieri, which builds warships, submarines and cruise ships, in charge of Vitrociset's aerospace work, including ground support work on the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The move triggered speculation in Italy that Fincantieri was bulking up to gain a stronger hand as it proceeds with cooperation talks with French shipyard Naval Group, given that Vitrociset is involved in automation, command and control, simulation, and testing work.
 A company source played down the timing of the deal, saying: “Vitrociset simply makes us more complete.” The announcement followed a visit to Rome on Aug. 1 by French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire to discuss the Fincantieri-Naval Group talks, which started last year but slowed during the creation of a new, populist government in Italy in June. The new government in Rome has had a series of spats with Paris, starting with France's reluctance to take in migrants who sail from Libya to Italy. The Italian government is also reluctant to move ahead on a new rail link between Italy and France, even though millions of euros have been spent on the program. And France and Italy are at loggerheads over lawless Libya, where the European nations back opposing sides in the slow-burning conflict.
 Tensions reached a peak last month when Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini openly said he did not want France to win the soccer World Cup, which it did. In June, Naval Group and Fincantieri handed their respective governments plans for possible industrial cooperation, a move seen by Fincantieri Chairman Giuseppe Bono as leading to an“Airbus of the sea,” seen as kick-starting a wider integration of the fractured European naval industry. Addressing Italy's Parliament this month, Bono said he was also backing moves by the European Union to encourage joint spending among partners, effectively leading to pooled EU defense procurement from transnational European defense giants. “Europe spends little and spends badly,” he said. “Everyone acts in the interest of their own nation; but if we concentrated, we could spend less but be more capable and more efficient.” Fincantieri is already set to take over French civil shipyard STX, and at the start of the year, Bono said a French-Italian merger of naval work could occur within five to 10 years. However, Le Maire was cautious during his Rome visit, claiming “it would not be wise” to talk of a naval merger. Current plans go no further than a 10 percent share cross-holding, combined with pooling research, acquisition of material and teaming on export work to reduce competition. Naval Group avoids the use of the Airbus tag, which signals a high degree of industrial consolidation, and prefers to refer to closer cooperation. The cooperation plan is creating uncertainty over the role to be played by Italian and French firms Leonardo and Thales, which rely on selling their systems for their nations' warships. Speculation that Leonardo would be sidelined in future joint ships built by Fincantieri and Naval Group increased with news of the Italian yard's purchase of Vitrociset, although Bono promised that Leonardo's involvement in the tie-up was “on the cards,” pointing out how it was an integral part of two offers of corvettes that Fincantieri was making to Romania and Brazil. Thales, which holds a 35 percent stake in Naval Group, also reportedly expressed caution about linking up Naval Group and Fincantieri, an Italian source told Defense News. This year, a leaked 36-page report from ADIT, a partially French state-owned company working in economic intelligence, painted a “highly negative” picture of the compliance and ethics of Fincantieri, a depiction which was challenged by Fincantieri. “There is a lack of communication, a lack of figures,” according to Fabrice Wolf, a defense economics analyst. “This leads many to be concerned that this project is ideologically driven and that the realities of the industrial base are not fully taken into account.” The main interest for Naval Group is to find work for its research office, which is the real reason for the FTI intermediate frigate program, he said. 
There is a “concern” elsewhere in French industry, notably at Thales, which sees its sale of radars and electronic systems under risk from Italian archrival Leonardo, Wolf added.
 “Naval Group is a great partner for Thales and I hope that lasts,” said Thales CEO Patrice Caine, business daily Les Echos reported May 27. Thales is more than just a shareholder in Naval Group, as the former transferred its combat systems business to the latter in 2007 in exchange for a shareholding, he added. 
“When we build the FTI frigate with Naval Group, it's like building the Rafale with Dassault — it's a link up for life,” he said, pondering the intentions of an Italian government that pursues nationalism and a protectionist trade policy. Naval Group and Thales were unavailable for comment.
 The Italian pursuit of anti-immigration and anti-free trade seems to have struck a chord with U.S. President Donald Trump, who met Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte at the White House on July 30. 
“Italy is becoming a reference country in Europe and a privileged partner of the United States,” Trump said. 
That U.S. preference for Italy effectively puts Rome ahead of Paris, French media have reported. https://www.defensenews.com/top-100/2018/08/10/fincantieri-bulks-up-with-acquisition-ahead-of-naval-group-partnership/

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

  Defense contractor with billions in sales got millions in pandemic loans intended for small businesses

  By Aaron Gregg August 3, 2020 at 8:00 a.m. EDT A military equipment supplier that has been accused of fraudulently misrepresenting its size in order to benefit from privileges associated with being a small business has received a Paycheck Protection Program small business loan worth at least $2 million, public records show. Atlantic Diving Supply, a Virginia Beach, Va.-based reseller of specialized military gear, is the latest organization whose receipt of taxpayer-backed loans through the Paycheck Protection Program has raised questions about a program launched in early April to help sustain employment at small companies through the economic crisis. In late April, the Treasury Department retroactively clarified its rules after well-known restaurant chains, car dealerships and hotel companies reported receiving PPP loans. Several of them returned the loan funds following public uproar; others kept the money. The SBA has said it will audit all PPP loans above $2 million to determine whether the recipients were eligible. Representatives from the Small Business Administration and Atlantic Diving Supply did not comment on the company's receipt of SBA loans. The company's legal issues are detailed extensively in a report released Monday by the nonprofit Project on Government Oversight, known as POGO. A review of business data by POGO and the nonprofit Anti-Corruption Data Collective concluded that ADS was one of at least 27 PPP recipients estimated annual sales of more than $1 billion in 2019. Another 2,068 loan recipients cleared $100 million in sales last year, according to the analysis. Nick Schwellenbach, a senior investigator at POGO, questioned whether it's appropriate for ADS to receive small business coronavirus loans. Schwellenbach's investigation also found that two other firms allegedly tied to ADS ― including one that was named in a settlement with the Department of Justice ― separately received smaller PPP loans. “It's important that taxpayer funding reserved for genuine small businesses isn't siphoned off by companies that are not eligible,” Schwellenbach said. “As a top government contractor with revenues well over a billion dollars a year, it strains credibility that Atlantic Diving Supply is a real small business, especially given several recent settlements and law enforcement outcomes related to their alleged small business contracting fraud." Although it received a favorable ruling from the SBA as recently as November 2019, ADS's small business credentials have long been called into question. ADS started as a small, family-owned shop focused on the military diving community in Virginia Beach, which includes the Navy SEALs. It was transformed under the leadership of long-time chief executive Luke Hillier, winning its first major government contract in 2000. It grew quickly to meet an insatiable demand for military gear of all sorts in the years following 9/11. That fast growth became permanent business as the U.S. military presence in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere dragged on for nearly two decades. At one point, ADS filed papers to go public, something that is usually the purview of large corporations. In 2015 it purchased Theodore Wille International, a military food and equipment supplier with offices in seven countries. Its business has remained healthy despite recent troop reductions. ADS received more than $3 billion in unclassified government contract dollars in 2019, procurement records show. That's more than some well-known, objectively large government contractors, including Bechtel, KBR and CACI. ADS has already cleared $1 billion in federal contract receipts in 2020 despite the economic crisis. As it has grown ADS's continued status as a small business status has been critical to its participation in the Defense Department's Tailored Logistics Support, or TLS program, a lucrative military supply line that is largely restricted to SBA-approved small and disadvantaged businesses. In recent years, ADS's official headcount has teetered close to the SBA's 500-employee limit for small-company designation, and the company has fought off repeated challenges to its size status. If ADS were declared “no longer small,” it would not only be ineligible for SBA coronavirus assistance, but would also be forbidden from competing on small business set-aside contracts that drive its business. In 2017, ADS settled federal allegations that it used a network of allegedly-affiliated companies to rig bids and fraudulently misrepresent its size. The Justice Department called the $16 million settlement “one of the largest recoveries involving alleged fraud in connection with small business contracting eligibility.” Hillier, who has moved on from the CEO role but remained the company's chairman as of July 20, according to a company filing, separately paid $20 million to settle federal allegations that he “violated the False Claims Act by fraudulently obtaining federal set-aside contracts reserved for small businesses that his company was ineligible to receive.” The settlements resulted from a Qui Tam lawsuit brought by whistleblowers. Two of the alleged affiliate businesses — Karda Systems and SEK Solutions — were named in a related case in which Ron Villanueva, a former state lawmaker from Virginia Beach, pleaded guilty to federal charges that he conspired to defraud the United States. Villanueva admitted that he and a friend pretended both companies were run by people who qualified for particular grants and drafted a misleading letter to the SBA that mischaracterized the degree to which one firm relied on other suppliers. ADS briefly lost its small business designation as a result of those allegations when a Defense Department contracting officer, concerned by ADS's settlement, requested a formal SBA review of the company's size status and its degree of affiliation with other companies named in the whistleblower lawsuit, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. That SBA review determined that ADS was “other than small,” which temporarily blocked the company from bidding on set-aside contracts. But ADS successfully appealed that ruling, which was reversed because it relied on old financial records. Today the company continues to receive federal contracts designated for small firms. Because the settlements arrived at by ADS and Hillier did not include a determination of liability, the company has been allowed to keep benefiting from the SBA's various small business programs. Its most recent size determination, which found it to be a small business, was finalized in November 2019. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/03/defense-contractor-with-billions-sales-got-millions-pandemic-loans-intended-small-businesses