25 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

Battle over Air Force’s $1,300 coffee cups heats up

The Air Force, under fire for throwing down $1,280 apiece to replace in-flight reheating cups after their handles break, is pledging to use 3-D printing to get that replacement cost down to 50 cents.

But Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is still wondering why these pricey water heaters are necessary in the first place, and plans to keep pushing the Air Force to find cheaper waysto warm up their coffee.

The cups, which plug into outlets on cargo planes to reheat liquids such as water or coffee, have a faulty plastic handle that easily breaks when the cups are dropped. And because replacement parts for the cup are no longer made, the Air Force has had to order a whole new cup when the handle breaks.

In an Oct. 2 letter to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, Grassley said that 25 replacement cups, each costing roughly $1,280 each, have been bought this year alone, for a total of roughly $32,000. The 60th Aerial Port Squadron at Travis Air Force Base in California spent nearly $56,000 to replace broken cups over the past three years.

And the price is rising. Grassley noted that Travis said each cup cost taxpayers $693 in 2016.

“Paying nearly $700 for a single cup is bad enough, but it's simply beyond reason to continue to pay ever-increasing prices for something as simple as a coffee cup that is so fragile that it needs to be constantly replaced,” Grassley said. “This latest example of reckless spending of taxpayer dollars gives me no confidence that the Air Force is taking real steps to reduce wasteful spending practices.”

In an Oct. 17 letter to Grassley, Wilson said that “it is simply irresponsible to spend thousands of dollars on manufactured parts when we have the technology available to produce them ourselves,” once a supplier either stops producing those parts or goes out of business.

Wilson said that in July, she ordered a new Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office to be created to find ways to develop and deliver parts at a fraction of the cost of traditional manufacturing methods. This office has recently shown it can 3-D print replacement handles for the reheating cup for about 50 cents each.

Wilson told Grassley that this cup is specially manufactured to plug into aircraft systems, and because it connects to the aircraft, the replacements need to be certified as airworthy by the FAA.

This has driven up the cost of buying 391 of these cups since 2016 to $326,785, Wilson said, or about $836 apiece.

The water heaters are used on 59 KC-10s, 52 C-5s, and 222 C-17s, Wilson said. But with planes aging, and the average KC-10 at 34 years old, it's harder and harder to find replacement parts for those aircraft, she said.

And the price tag for raw materials for those parts is also increasing, Wilson said, with copper and chrome plating costs have increased 180 percent since 2016.

Wilson told Grassley that she and Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein have ordered the new sustainment office to look for items in the procurement process that it can self-produce, or other overpriced items that it can stop buying without hurting the Air Force's mission.

Grassley was dissatisfied with Wilson's response, and said he will keep digging.

“It leaves me with more questions,” Grassley said. “While I appreciate that the Air Force is working to find innovations that would help save taxpayer dollars, it remains unclear why it cannot find a cheaper alternative to a $1,280 cup. Government officials have the responsibility to use taxpayer dollars efficiently. Too often, that's not the case.”

The Air Force also said that Air Mobility Command is no longer buying the heaters for large transport aircraft as they try to find more cost-effective solutions.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/10/22/battle-over-air-forces-1300-coffee-cups-heats-up

Sur le même sujet

1 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

Boeing nets $2.6B for next 15 KC-46 Pegasus tankers
ByEd Adamczyk Sept. 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. Air Force awarded Boeing Co. a $2.6 billion contract to build 15 KC-46 tanker aircraft, as well as spares and support documents. The deal, announced Friday by the Department of Defense, calls for exercise of a contract option to build the additional aircraft, as well as supply two spare engines, five wing refueling pod kits, spare parts and support equipment. Work on the contract will be performed in Seattle, Wash., and is expected to be completed by March 2023. The Air Force plans to purchase 179 such aircraft, known as the Pegasus, by 2027, and Japan's air defense force has purchased four. The plane is a military aerial refueling and strategic military transport aircraft with origins in the Boeing 767 passenger plane, capable of midflight refueling of fighter planes and other aircraft. Designed to replace the Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers, the Air Force acquired its first KC-46 in January 2019. The plane's development has a troubled history. Boeing received a $55.5 million contract in August to redesign the plane's boom telescope actuator, which controls the device that swings out from beneath the plane to refuel other planes. The tankers were grounded in March for one week after the Air Force said it found loose tools and other foreign object debris inside the completed airplanes. The issues came just weeks after the company delivered the first two aircraft to the Air Force, and Boeing called the problem "a big deal" in an internal memo in February. These and other issues caused the plane's development program, and delivery of the first 18 planes, to be three years behind schedule. Pease Air National Guard Base, N.H., became the first guard base to receive a KC-46 plane in August. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2019/09/30/Boeing-nets-26B-for-next-15-KC-46-Pegasus-tankers/9411569856689
23 avril 2020 | International, Naval

Navy Rushes To Get F-35s on USS JFK; Other Ford Carriers Wait Their Turn
The service's aircraft carrier boss says the COVID economic slowdown hasn't effected building new carriers -- yet. By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON: The Navy's rushed effort to retrofit its newest aircraft carrier to operate the F-35 will create a testbed for the service's other Ford carriers — which have not been built to fly the fifth generation aircraft — as the Navy juggles work on the remaining three big decks. The $11 billion USS John F. Kennedy (CVN 79) was designed and christened without the capability to fly the 5th generation fighter because of cost caps and the aircraft's infamously delayed development. Those schedule slippages forced the Navy to design and build the ships while the messy F-35 was still undergoing development. In the 2020 NDAA Congress indicated it had had it's fill of delays to the carrier and ordered the Navy to get to work refitting the Kennedy before it sets sail in 2024, forcing the Navy to improvise and refit the just-christened ship. Speaking with reporters today, Rear Adm. James Downey, head of the Navy's carrier programs, said those changes are forcing him to hold off on some early work on the forthcoming USS Enterprise (CVN 80), the third Ford-class carrier, and the USS Doris Miller (CVN 81) to ensure the Kennedy retrofits are done correctly before incorporating them on the other ships which have just started their build cycles. Downey said he's working to accelerate the integration of the F-35 on the JFK and prove out the upgrades in operational testing before doing similar work on the next Ford carrier to be built, the USS Enterprise. That way, all of the bugs will be ironed out on the JFK. The original plan to incorporate the F-35 on the four Ford-class ships was to phase the capability in after the ships were declared operational, and then to refit them as they came into port for overhaul. But Congress, frustrated that the nation's newest class of carrier couldn't operate the nation's newest fighter plane, told the Navy to speed things up. The namesake of the class, the $13.2 billion USS Gerald R. Ford, is currently acting as a training asset off the East Coast, where air wings get carrier certified as the ship continues to iron out remaining issues with its weapons elevators. Simply put, the Ford won't fly the F-35 for years to come. Those electromagnetic elevators have been one of the biggest issues plaguing the ship over the past two years, as the Navy installed them without first testing the new technology ashore, resulting in a ship that had no functioning weapons elevators. And what use is a warship without weapons? It's been slow progress to get them up and running, but the Navy recently certified that just the fifth of eleven elevators is now up and running. The working lifts have logged more than 8,000 cycles over the past several months of operational testing as the Ford acts as the Navy's East Coast training platform to certify pilots. The Ford has been operating one month at sea and one pierside for the last several months, and has launched 2,300 aircraft in that time. Downey said the Ford is keeping to its schedule, and that impending supply-chain issues the services are dealing with as the COVID-19 crisis shutters the global economy shouldn't have any near-term impact on the program overall. “We don't have any real significant concerns right now; we know where the suppliers are,” he said. “Prior to this, we had increased some of our procurements for spares and various materials so we had a pretty steady demand signal.” While the Ford class ships wait for the F-35 upgrades, the 36-year old USS Carl Vinson is undergoing a $34 million refit in Bremerton, Wash. so it can begin flying F-35s by 2021, making the veteran ship the first carrier in the Navy to fly the 5th generation aircraft even before the JFK. While both Nimitz and Ford-class aircraft carriers can operate with F-35Cs aboard, significant modifications are required for both classes to fly and sustain the aircraft for extended periods. Also, the ships will need the capability to push and fuse all the data the F-35s can generate, along with building additional classified spaces, new jet blast deflectors and other refits. Room also needs to be made for Osprey tiltrotor aircraft, which will replace the Navy's C-2A Greyhound fleet that are unable to haul the F-35's heavy engines out to the ship. The USS Enterprise is slated to deploy in 2028 and the USS Doris Miller will be ready to sail in 2032. In January, the Navy awarded Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding a $24 billion contract for the two ships, compared to a predicted cost of $28 billion if the sea service had purchased them separately. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/navy-rushes-to-get-f-35s-on-uss-jfk-other-ford-carriers-will-wait
3 juin 2020 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR

Israel company targets opportunities in Europe and Asia for software-defined radios
Seth J. Frantzman Israel defense giant Rafael will target armies in Asia and Europe with its software-defined radios, banking on increasing demand for digitized communications systems. With programs already underway in Germany and India, the company is pitching its BNET family of radios through partnerships with companies in half a dozen European markets — looking to snag market share from L3Harris, Thales, Leonardo and Israel's own Elbit Systems. Yoav Wermuth, head of Rafael's Communications Division (C3) and former head of research and development, says that BNET can be integrated into a variety of platforms with existing architecture and systems. Integration is achieved through local partnerships, as it has done in India, or working with Spain's Technobit, which provides the industrial and manufacturing solution with Rafael's software and radio kit. The company is now on the hunt for a local partner in the United Kingdom. “We have several forms of the radio to be compatible with platforms from aircraft to tanks, and the integration is simple as we support standard interfaces," Wermuth said. With older vehicles some re-wiring may be necessary, along with the addition of computers, which is one of the upgrades Rafael supports in India. "When integrating into a new tank, the tank provider has a modern architecture we plug into, and there are some standards in industry in last decade that make it simple with interfaces and protocols,” he added. Rafael's BNET has a broadband IP radio for aircraft (BNET-AR), a man-packable system (BNET-MPS), a vehicle (BNET-V) and hand-held model (BNET-HH). The system enables multiple radios and networks without tactical bottlenecks in communications, Wermuth said. In short: No more jeeps with dozens of antennas, but rather one radio. “You connect each force, whether soldier, vehicle or aircraft or drone,” he says. “If you take a current software defined radio, tactical for instance, you receive 1 megabyte per second; on BNET you can do 100 times more.” Many militaries lag behind the rapid advances in civilian infrastructure for communications, thanks in part to the success of applications like WhatsApp on smartphones, according to Rafael officials. Now they're playing catchup, with Israel in the midst of a major digitization upgrade with its five year Momentum program, which includes BNET and Rafael's Fire Weaver technology for reducing sensor to shooter times. The same technology was chosen when Germany hired Rafael and Atos in December 2019 for a “glass battlefield” demonstration. “Militaries are conservative today and must go through transformative thinking to change how they conduct their mission, as it happens in civilian life,” says Wermuth. Furthermore, providing a new communications system for militaries requires solving three challenges: lack of infrastructure when deployed in the field, the need to operate in severe conditions, and the need to ensure security amid threats of electronic warfare tactics, according to Rafael. Those challenges have been addressed with the Israel Defense Force, which the company hopes will be a selling point for foreign militaries seeking similar upgrades to communication technology. In addition to the German demonstration, Rafael also won a $30 million contract for the Indian Air Force signed with the company's local joint venture Astra Rafael Comsys Pvt Ltd, which could eventually approach $200 million according to the company. The potential is far greater if the program expands to equip the whole Indian Air Force. Rafael works within the framework of India's demand to make products locally, building a local manufacturing footprint by way of joint ventures and local companies. It plans to compete for the Indian army's massive 100,000 radio network when that becomes available. The work with Germany also provides a foot in the door for work with the Tactical Edge Networking plan that envisions Germany and the Netherlands working together on tactical communications. This could combine the Bundeswehr's D-LBO and Dutch Ministry of Defense FOXTROT systems, and is a multi-billion dollar program. A request for proposal (RFP) is expected for next year. “In Europe there is now a rush of digitization programs,” says Wermuth, pointing to Spain where the country is seeking a complete renovation of tactical communications. Tenders for the army and air force are expected in the $1 billion range. Rafael hopes to team with the Spanish firm Technobit, which they have worked with before to supply remote controlled weapons stations to the Spanish army. The company has demonstrated BNET to Spanish officials from the Ministry of Defense . In the U.K., Rafael hopes to play a role with the Morpheus program for next generation tactical communications for the British Armed Forces. In Australia the company is eyeing the Land 200 program, which is also estimated at $1 billion in digitization. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/2020/06/02/israel-company-targets-opportunities-in-europe-and-asia-for-software-defined-radios/

Toutes les nouvelles