13 mai 2022 | International, Terrestre
Javelin missile: Made by the US, wielded by Ukraine, feared by Russia
The American-made FGM-148 Javelin has been making mincemeat of T-72s and T-90s in Ukraine, according to reports.
17 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Canadian CF-18 upgrade package OK’d by US
By: Aaron Mehta
WASHINGTON — The U.S. State Department has cleared Canada to purchase a package of upgrades for its fleet of CF-18 Hornets, including upgraded radars and weapons, intended to serve as a bridge between the legacy fleet and Canada's future fighter.
The package, which comes with an estimated price tag of $862.3 million, would fulfill the requirements for Canada's “Hornet Extension Project Phase 2,” which was announced last year. The program seeks to upgrade the “sensors, weapons, survivability, security and mission support to maintain parity with evolving threats” for 36 of Canada's Hornets, with initial delivery in 2023, according to a statement on the Canadian military's website.
Canada has 80 CF-18s in inventory and is in the midst of a long attempt to replace the aging fighters with 88 newer designs — one of which has been marred with restarts and political challenges. The Phase 2 extension is designed to help bridge the capability gap until new jets come online.
Among the upgrades included in this potential package: 50 Sidewinder AIM-9X Block II tactical missiles; 38 APG-79(V)4 active electronically scanned array radars; 38 APG-79(V)4 AESA radar A1 kits; 46 F/A-18A wide-band RADOMEs; upgrades to the Advanced Distributed Combat Training System; and technical assistance to support the upgraded jets.
“This sale will provide Canada a 2-squadron bridge of enhanced F/A-18A aircraft to continue meeting NORAD and NATO commitments while it gradually introduces new advanced aircraft via the Future Fighter Capability Program between 2025 and 2035,” said a statement from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, using an acronym for the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command.
“The proposed sale of the capabilities, as listed, will improve Canada's capability to meet current and future warfare threats and provide greater security for its critical infrastructure,” it added.
Work would be performed by Raytheon in its El Segundo, California, location; General Dynamics Mission Systems in Marion, Virginia; Boeing's St. Louis, Missouri, facility; and Collins Aerospace in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Any industrial offset agreements will be sorted out in the future.
Announcements of potential Foreign Military Sales deals are not final, and dollar amounts or quantities of items may change during final negotiation.
https://www.defensenews.com/global/the-americas/2020/06/16/canadian-cf-18-upgrade-package-okd-by-us
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12 octobre 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Contracts for October 8, 2021
Today
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7 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial
How low-Earth orbit satellites will enable connectivity across all domains of warfare
Nathan Strout The Space Development Agency will provide the unifying element in the Defense Department's future Joint All-Domain Command and Control concept, pulling together tactical networks developed by the services with a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites. With the JADC2 concept, the department envisions an overarching network capable of connecting sensors to shooters regardless of where they are located. That means U.S. Air Force sensors could feed data to U.S. Army shooters, or even National Reconnaissance Office sensors could send information to U.S. Air Force shooters. “Each of the services have their own way to incorporate [tactical networks], and JADC2 is just a way to make sure they all have the same networking infrastructure to talk to one another, essentially,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said at the C4ISRNET Conference on May 6. “We plug directly into [JADC2] as the space layer to pull all of that communication together.” Service efforts include programs like the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System and the Army's TITAN ground system. What the Defense Department wants to ensure is that programs like these have a way to share data across the armed services. “All of those are reliant on a way to be able to have a back end to go in space to be able to communicate across one another and across back to [the continental United States], etc. That's where the Space Development Agency's transport layer comes in,” Tournear said. “In fact, in the defense planning guidance, Secretary Esper put out the edict that basically said the transport layer will be the integrating aspect of JADC2 to be able to pull all of this tactical communication together in space.” On May 1, the SDA released its solicitation for the first 10 satellites that will make up its transport layer — a space-based mesh network in low-Earth orbit. When fully developed, that transport layer will provide a global network that various sensors, shooters and tactical networks will be able to plug into for tactical communications. A key part of that effort involves ensuring space-based sensors can feed into the services' battlefield networks in near-real time. Once that transport layer is placed on orbit in 2022, the SDA wants to demonstrate space-based sensor data being downlinked to a ground station, then uplinked to the transport layer for dissemination to the tactical edge via TITAN and Link 16 tactical network. But ultimately, the SDA wants to cut out the ground station and move the data directly from the space-based sensor to the transport layer via optical cross links. That's a stretch goal for those first 10 satellites, and the minimal viable product when the second tranche of 150 satellites is added in 2024, said Tournear. Tournear declined to identify the SDA's mission partners on development of space-based sensors, which will need to use optical inter-satellite cross links to plug into the transport layer. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/05/06/how-low-earth-orbit-satellites-will-enable-jadc2/