14 mai 2021 | International, Aérospatial

Britain buys 14 new Chinook helos, but it’ll take a decade for full delivery

The deal was made through the U.S. Defense Department’s Foreign Military Sales process and will see Britain pay $2 billion for the helicopters and associated equipment.

https://www.defensenews.com/air/2021/05/13/britain-buys-14-new-chinook-helos-but-itll-take-a-decade-for-full-delivery

Sur le même sujet

  • Epirus, a venture-backed startup, inks deal with Northrop for counter-drone tech

    21 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

    Epirus, a venture-backed startup, inks deal with Northrop for counter-drone tech

    By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Epirus, a venture-backed startup offering a counter-drone capability, launched quietly enough two years ago, but it's making noise by bringing together key veterans of Microsoft, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon ― and by landing its first deal with a name-brand defense prime contractor. Epirus chief executive Leigh Madden was general manager for Microsoft's national security business before he joined the Hawthorne, Calif.,-based firm two months ago, and its chief financial officer, Ken Bedingfield, is a former chief financial officer at Northrop. The former chairman of Epirus is Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the Silicon Valley data-analytics company Palantir Technologies. Epirus, this week, is expected to announce a previously undisclosed strategic supplier agreement with Northrop to provide exclusive access to Epirus' software-defined electromagnetic pulse system, called Leonidas. The dollar value of the deal isn't being disclosed. Northrop said Leonidas would augment its own kinetic and non-kinetic solutions to counter small drones. The Army recently selected Northrop's Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control software, or FAAD-C2, as the interim C2 system to counter small drones. (DoD's FY21 budget request included $18.7 million for counter-drone enhancements for the system.) “UAS threats are proliferating across the modern battlespace,” said Kenn Todorov, vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman's Combat Systems and Mission Readiness division. “By integrating the Epirus EMP weapon system into our C-UAS portfolio, we continue maturing our robust, integrated, layered approach to addressing and defeating these evolving threats.” Many companies have jumped into the $2 billion counter-UAS market, anticipating a boom as commercial drones have grown cheaper and more commonplace, posing an asymmetric threat on the battlefield as well as a threat to airports, sports stadiums, government buildings and urban areas. So many companies are in the field the Pentagon has been working to streamline the number of systems available across the department. Epirus executives said the company's technology is unique because its use of solid-state commercial semiconductor technology makes it lighter and smaller ― and because it can have narrow effects or be “adjusted to sanitize a volume of terrain or sky, creating a forcefield effect.” The company's systems involve a combination of high-power microwave technology and, for enhanced targeting, artificial intelligence. Epirus Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Bo Marr was a radio frequency engineer and technical lead on Raytheon's next-generation jammer program, under development by the U.S. Navy. Madden, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who spent eight years at Microsoft, and Bedingfield, who spent five years as Northrop's CFO, both said they joined Epirus because they were impressed by the technology and its potential. “Northrop and Microsoft are both multibillion-dollar defense businesses, and I think we bring a knowledge of how to operate around some of the larger opportunities and to make outsized impacts in the market,” Madden said. “We're taking that experience to a smaller, innovative company. I think that will allow us to really accelerate the pace of growth and have a more rapid and greater impact for our customers.” The Pentagon has attempted to shift toward working with smaller, more innovative companies to supplement its work with larger firms, which continue to dominate the marketplace. Flexible, non-traditional contact vehicles called “other transaction authorities” have grown more popular as the Pentagon has turned to Silicon Valley for cutting edge technologies. “One of the things that attracted me to come to Epirus is the ability to work in an agile enterprise that is trying to take some of the approaches of Silicon Valley and apply them to the defense world―to iterate quicker and to field faster, and to be able to respond to the urgent needs of the customer,” Bedingfield said. Bedingfield said the company is growing fast and generating revenue from working with customers on studies and technology demonstrations, but it's as yet unclear when it will begin to deliver products. The coronavirus pandemic has slowed its hiring, but the firm is looking to double in the next year, adding more than 50 employees in Hawthorne, and a planned office in Northern Virgina. Formed in 2018 and named after the magical bow of the Greek hero Theseus, Epirus was raising $17.8 million in new funding last November, according to its public filings. With Lonsdale and Marr, its co-founders include its previous CEO; current Vice Chairman John Tenet, from venture capitol firm 8VC; Chief Operating Officer Max Mednik, a Google veteran; UnitedHealthcare Chief Digital Officer Grant Verstandig is the current chairman. Palantir, which Lonsdale founded with billionaire Peter Thiel in 2005, appeared as an upstart when the Defense Department hadn't opened its arms as wide to Silicon Valley. Last year, Palantir beat Raytheon in a head-to-head competition to provide the Army a new version of its intelligence analysis system ― after a years long saga in which the Army rejected Palantir's offering and Palantir sued. In September, Epirus won a Small Business Innovation Research contract from the U.S. Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center as part of its AFWERX technology accelerator. The contract was for the company's novel architecture for using commercial off-the-shelf field programmable gate arrays, which are semiconductor devices commonly used in electronic circuits, as ultra-wideband radio frequency transceivers. While traditional systems use large vacuum tubes, Madden said Leonidas is based in microchips and software. “We believe there is no other solution on the market that allows for fully software defined precision targeting at digital speeds, enabling both precision targeting as well as large-area, counter-swarm targeting of many drones at the same time,” he said. Northrop and Epirus are expected to announce their partnership this week. “We're not just solving today's swarm threat, we're also looking to the future to understand how asymmetric threats will evolve,” Marr said in a statement. “Epirus is an agile startup, Northrop Grumman has defense prime contractor resources, and through this partnership we intend to deliver the best technology to the warfighter as fast as possible.” https://www.defensenews.com/2020/07/20/epirus-venture-backed-startup-inks-deal-with-northrop-for-counter-drone-tech

  • Aurora moves into next design phase for DARPA vertical takeoff X-plane

    21 mai 2024 | International, Aérospatial

    Aurora moves into next design phase for DARPA vertical takeoff X-plane

    Bell Textron, Northrop Grumman and Piasecki Aircraft Corp. have also worked on ideas for DARPA's vertical lift SPRINT aircraft.

  • Viola Amherd veut toujours les avions de combat

    18 février 2019 | International, Aérospatial

    Viola Amherd veut toujours les avions de combat

    Christine Talos/ats Suisse: La nouvelle cheffe de l'armée entend poursuivre l'acquisition de nouveaux jets et d'un système de défense sol-air. Mais elle demande un avis externe supplémentaire. La nouvelle cheffe du département de la Défense, Viola Amherd, ne tire pas un trait sur les futurs avions de combat et le système de défense sol-air de longue portée. Un chantier lancé par son prédecesseur Guy Parmelin. Elle ne veut toutefois pas trancher trop vite. Dans un communiqué, son département fait savoir que la Valaisanne entend poursuivre l'acquisition de nouveaux jets. Néanmoins, est-il précisé, avant de soumettre au Conseil fédéral une proposition concrète, elle souhaite se faire une «image complète» du projet. Raison pour laquelle elle sollicite un avis externe supplémentaire sur le rapport d'experts «Avenir de la défense aérienne» paru en mai 2017. Elle poursuit par ailleurs les entretiens avec des spécialistes de son département. Nouvelle analyse des menaces La ministre demande en outre une nouvelle analyse interne actualisée des menaces pour la comparer aux évaluations précédentes et en tirer toutes les conséquences utiles pour le programme Air2030. Une fois la situation éclaircie, le Conseil fédéral se penchera à nouveau sur le renouvellement des moyens de protection de l'espace aérien. Cela devrait être le cas au cours du premier semestre 2019, précise le département. Il s'agira de déterminer comment répondre à la demande du Parlement, qui veut que le peuple puisse trancher dès que possible sur le principe de l'acquisition de nouveaux avions de combat. La question devrait être tranchée indépendamment du type d'avion et l'achat s'effectuer dans le cadre du budget de l'armée. Projet critiqué L'année dernière, le Conseil fédéral avait opté pour un arrêté de planification pouvant être combattu par référendum. Celui-ci porte sur l'achat de nouveaux jets mais aussi de moyens de défense sol-air de longue portée. Le renouvellement devrait être achevé d'ici à fin 2030. Plusieurs conditions devraient être remplies. La facture totale ne devrait pas dépasser 8 milliards de francs. Les entreprises étrangères avec lesquelles des contrats seront signés devraient compenser le 100% de la valeur des contrats par des affaires compensatoires en Suisse. Lors de la consultation, le projet a été diversement accueilli. Le PLR et le PDC l'ont rejeté. Ils ont notamment critiqué l'idée de lier dans un même paquet l'achat de jets et le renouvellement de la défense sol-air. Les Verts n'apprécient quant à eux pas que l'on se prononce sans connaître encore le type, la quantité ou le coût du matériel qui sera choisi. Pour le PS, les 8 milliards prévus sont trop élevés. La moitié suffirait. L'UDC veut au moins 9 milliards. Chantier ouvert Guy Parmelin a laissé le chantier en passant au Département de l'économie. Il n'en a pas moins déjà fixé les exigences pour le nouveau paquet d'acquisitions. Cinq jets seront évalués. De ce côté-ci de l'Atlantique, on retrouve le Gripen E suédois (Saab), le Rafale français (Dassault) et l'européen Eurofighter (Airbus). S'y ajoutent deux avions américains: le successeur du FA-18, le Super Hornet de Boeing, et le F-35A de Lockheed-Martin. Pour la défense sol-air, trois systèmes sont dans la course: le SAMP/T français (eurosam), l'israélien David's Sling (Rafael) et l'américain Patriot (Raytheon). (nxp) https://www.24heures.ch/suisse/Viola-Amherd-veut-toujours-les-avions-de-combat/story/29101849

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