6 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force will release $882 million to Boeing that it had retained due to ongoing technical problems involving the KC-46 tanker, the service announced Thursday. The move is meant to help the company make ends meet during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“This agreement provides Boeing $882M of withheld payments for previous non-compliance in 33 KC-46 deliveries,” the service said in a statement. “This withhold release is in line with Department of the Air Force and Department of Defense policies to maximize cash flow, where prudent, to combat coronavirus impacts on the industry base."
When the U.S. Air Force agreed to take delivery of the first KC-46 tanker in January 2019, it made clear to Boeing that it still maintained a significant piece of financial leverage. The service could withhold a maximum of $28 million every time a new KC-46 was delivered — about 20 percent of the total sum due to Boeing.
Air Force officials said they would hold back those funds until they saw measurable progress in fixing technical deficiencies, particularly the tanker's troubled Remote Vision System. By January, when Boeing had delivered 30 planes, the service had withheld about $800 million, according to Defense One.
The Air Force and Boeing on Thursday announced a final agreement to fix the RVS, the imaging system used by boom operators to see the position of the receiver aircraft and the movements of the boom itself. According to the deal, Boeing will pay for both incremental fixes to current RVS software and hardware, as well as a complete redesign of the system with new cameras, processors and computers.
Speaking with reporters about the decision on Thursday, Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper stressed that the service will be able to re-enact the cost penalties if Boeing's performance begins to slip. However, the service wanted to ensure that Boeing has the funding it needs to begin the RVS redesign, which it is calling RVS 2.0.
“Have we given up our leverage? No, I think we've used it well," he said. “Part of what we committed to Boeing is to do an expedited review over the next 120 days for the 159 outstanding noncompliances. Boeing asserts that they have addressed those noncompliances, and we are going to review those quickly. We will not instate withholds over the 120 period, but if we put that some of the corrections that have been put in place don't make our requirement, then we will start withholds again.”
As the largest maker of commercial planes in the United States, Boeing has been hit particularly hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has spurred travel restrictions and called into question commercial airlines' ability to pay for Boeing aircraft already on order.
Meanwhile, Boeing announced last week that it would shutter operations for two weeks at its facilities in the Seattle, Washington, area due to the high number of COVID-19 cases in the state. Those production operations include the manufacturing of the KC-46 at Everett and the P-8 submarine-hunting plane in Renton.
The Air Force intends to buy 179 tankers over the KC-46 program of record.
4 décembre 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Turla hijacks Storm-0156 servers, deploying custom malware on Afghan and Indian networks for covert espionage.
22 novembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By Byron Callan Unlike in the U.S. health care or energy sectors, it is so far hard to discern much of a stock market reaction for the defense sector in the run-up to the 2020 U.S. election. There has not been the equivalent of issues such as Medicare for all or fracking that has grabbed the attention of defense investors. That might be because defense and security issues have been absent from the debates so far, and Democratic candidates have put forth few detailed defense and foreign policy plans and proposals. It is way too soon to act with conviction on the potential outcomes of the 2020 election and their implications for defense. Polls can and will change. The likely Democratic presidential candidate may not be known until April, when most of the primaries are completed, or July 2020, when the party holds its convention. And it remains to be seen how that candidate will fare against President Donald Trump, presuming he is not removed from office. Still, leaders at defense companies and analysts have to assess potential outcomes and what they may entail for 2021 and beyond. The current consensus is that there likely will be split-party control of Congress and the White House in 2021-22. The House probably will remain in Democratic control, but the Republicans may retain a slim majority in the Senate, given the number of “safe” seats they will defend. Democrats might sweep in, but they are very unlikely to gain a 60-seat majority, and it is arguable that if they do not, the chamber will vote to do away with cloture, which gives the minority party in the Senate power to shape and channel legislation. This alone should temper expectations that there will be radical changes for defense. Moreover, the day after the 2020 election, both parties will have their eyes on the 2022 election, when 12 Democratic and 22 Republican seats will be contested. If Trump is reelected, the simplest path forward will be to conclude that current defense policies will remain in place. Congress has not been willing to approve the deep nondefense discretionary cuts the administration has proposed for 2017-19, and it is not clear what would change this posture in 2021-22. Barring a major change in the global security outlook, U.S. defense spending may thus remain hemmed in by debt/deficit concerns and demands for parity in increases of nondefense spending. Trump is likely to continue to browbeat allies in Europe and Asia to spend more on defense. The Pentagon will push ahead with its current major modernization and technology priorities, including artificial intelligence, directed energy and hypersonics, and there should be some continuity with civilian leadership at the Pentagon. However, the global security outlook may be the biggest variable for the sector to assess. Iran has not shown any readiness to bow to U.S. “maximum pressure,” and North Korea has not denuclearized. How Russia and China respond to the prospects of another four years of Trump also has to be weighed. NATO and other alliances also may be under more stress. And inevitably, there are likely to be new security issues in the early 2020s that are not top of mind or even conceivable today. There are a range of defense views and perspectives among the leading Democratic candidates. The views of the two most progressive candidates—Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—could be viewed as potentially the most disruptive for defense. Warren, in particular, has emphasized her view of “agency capture” by major U.S. contractors, and her health care plan is to be paid for in part by a $798 billion cut to defense spending over 10 years, though the baseline of those cuts has not been stipulated. If a progressive candidate appears to do well in the Democratic nomination process and in polling against Trump, however, it will be useful to recall the congressional dynamic noted above. Congress could act as a firewall against steeper cuts and sweeping change. Equally, it is useful to recall that what candidates promise is not always what they do once they are in office. A more moderate, centrist Democratic candidate such as former Vice President Joe Biden or South Bend, Illinois, Mayor Pete Buttigieg may appear benign for defense and will very likely face the same geopolitical security challenges that Trump could face. If there is a shift back toward a U.S. promotion of democracy and human rights, that could affect recent international defense export patterns and raise tensions with China, Russia and other autocratic regimes. Probably, there will be a bigger debate over nuclear strategic forces modernization, the role of technology in defense and whether it can deliver credible military capability and deterrence at lower cost. Even if U.S. defense spending evidences little real growth in the early 2020s, these factors could be the most important for contractors to navigate. https://aviationweek.com/defense/opinion-how-2020-election-likely-affect-defense
7 janvier 2022 | International, C4ISR
Mastering quantum technology is an 'absolutely strategic interest' for France's national defense, said Defense Minister Florence Parly.