28 août 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre

Can Army Futures Command Overcome Decades Of Dysfunction?

ARMY S&T CONFERENCE: How broken is the procurement system the new Army Futures Command was created to fix? It's not just the billions wasted on cancelled weapons programs. It's also the months wasted because, until now, there has not been one commander who can crack feuding bureaucrats' heads together and make them stop bickering over, literally, inches.

“I have not always been an Army Futures Command fan,” retired Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr told the National Defense Industrial Association conference here. But as he thought about his own decades in Army acquisition, he's come around.

How bad could things get? When he was working in the Army resourcing office (staff section G-8), Spoehr recalled, the Army signals school at Fort Gordon wanted a new radio test kit that could fit in a six-inch cargo pocket. The radio procurement programmanager, part of an entirely separate organization, reported back there was nothing on the market under eight inches. The requirements office insisted on sixinches, the acquisition office insisted they had no money to develop something smaller than the existing eight-inchers, and memos shot back and forth for months. At last, Spoehr warned both sides that if they didn't come to some agreement, he'd kill the funding. Suddenly Fort Gordon rewrote the requirement from “fit in a cargo pocket” to “cargo pouch” and the procurement people could go buy an eight-inch kit.

That kind of disconnected dithering is what Army Futures Command is intended to prevent. “I had the money, but nobody really had control of all of this,” Spoehr said. As a result, he said, “we probably spent six months trading memos back and forth on the size of the radio frequency test kit.”

Multiplying that by thousands of requirements over hundreds of systems, and the wasted time and money gets pretty bad. But what's often worse is when the requirements are unrealistic and no one pushes back. Most notoriously ,Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki demanded easily airlifted Future Combat Systems vehicles that weighed less than 20 tons but had the combat power of a 60-ton M1 Abrams tank. The designs eventually grew to 26 tons, and the performance requirements came down, but by then FCS had lost the confidence of both Congress and Defense Secretary Bob Gates, who canceled it in 2009. It was another casualty of overly ambitious requirements drawn up by staff officers in isolation from the people who'd actually have to build them. Army Futures Command is structured to force those two groups to talk to each other from the start.

Full article: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/can-army-futures-command-overcome-decades-of-dysfunction

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15 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

Super Herculean Accomplishment: Global C-130J Fleet Surpasses 2 Million Flight Hours
ATLANTA, Oct. 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) announced today the global community of C-130J Super Hercules operators recently surpassed 2 million flight hours. These hours were logged beginning with the C-130J's first flight on April 5, 1996, through the end of July 2019. Twenty-two operators from 18 nations contributed to this achievement, adding hours through multiple missions including combat, transport, aerial refueling, special operations, medevac, humanitarian relief, search and rescue, weather reconnaissance, firefighting and commercial freight delivery. Rod McLean, vice president and general manager of the Air Mobility & Maritime Missions line of business at Lockheed Martin, announced the milestone at the Hercules Operators Conference, the annual C-130 operator-industry event held in Atlanta. "The C-130J has earned a reputation as the world's workhorse and this most recent achievement is a powerful reminder of the Super Hercules' unmatched global reach," McLean said. "Crews continue to exemplify the C-130J's proven capability and versatility with every mission they fly. The Lockheed Martin team is proud of the work of the Super Herc crews who rely on the C-130J to support vital missions, both home and abroad." Countries with military variant C-130Js contributing to these flight hours include (in order of delivery) the United Kingdom, United States (the U.S. Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard), Australia, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Canada, India, Qatar, Iraq, Oman, Tunisia, Israel, Kuwait, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, France, and Bahrain. Also contributing is Lockheed Martin Flight Operations, whose crews are the first to fly every C-130J produced. The U.S. Air Force maintains the largest C-130J fleet, with Super Hercs flown by Air Mobility Command, Air Combat Command, Air Education and Training Command, Special Operations Command, and Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve units. In addition, Defence Contract Management Agency crews support C-130J test flights at Lockheed Martin's Aeronautics site in Marietta, Georgia, home of C-130 production. The C-130J Super Hercules is the current production model of the legendary C-130 Hercules aircraft. For more information on the C-130J Super Hercules, visit www.lockheedmartin.com/c130. About Lockheed Martin Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 105,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2019-10-15-Super-Herculean-Accomplishment-Global-C-130J-Fleet-Surpasses-2-Million-Flight-Hours
8 mars 2022 | International, Terrestre

BAE Systems buys military simulations firm for $200 million
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Can Army Futures Command Overcome Decades Of Dysfunction?

Sur le même sujet

BAE Systems buys military simulations firm for $200 million In the statement, BAE Systems said it expects the global market for military training and simulations environments to eventually surpass $11 billion annually.

BAE Systems buys military simulations firm for $200 million
In the statement, BAE Systems said it expects the global market for military training and simulations environments to eventually surpass $11 billion annually.