24 janvier 2019 | International, Aérospatial

Change of plans: Seoul decides to start from scratch with helo competition

By:

SEOUL — It looked like Italy's aerospace group Leonardo was going to be an easy winner for South Korea's second batch of anti-submarine helicopters. The procurement program would seek 12 more AW-159 “Wildcat” helicopters, with no other competitors for the $840 million program.

But the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, or DAPA, threw a curveball, deciding to accept a U.S. proposal for alternate option and to begin the competitive bidding process from the scratch.

The plan for the maritime operational helicopter, or MOH, was originally to sign a direct commercial deal with a foreign helicopter maker, with three bidders — Leonardo, Lockheed Martin and NH Industries — showing interest.

The two latter contenders failed to submit their proposals by the Oct. 31 deadline, leaving Leonardo seemingly as the only remaining bidder.

According to sources from DAPA, however, the U.S. government in November sent a letter of price and availability of Lockheed Martin's MH-60R Seahawk, causing South Korea's arms procurement officials o rethink the acquisition approach.

“We've decided to consider the U.S. FMS option,” DAPA spokesman Park Jung-eun told Defense News. “We're going to weigh in on both options of commercial and FMS contracts.”

As dictated by acquisition regulation, two successive failed biddings mean that the agency can make a private contract with a sole bidder, but that's not mandatory.

The agency is expected to issue a renewed request for proposals as early as March, according to DAPA officials. Leonardo would be a direct buy, while the Sikorsky bid would be a foreign military sale.

Leonardo said in a statement that it would still pursue the South Korean naval helicopter program “in a fair and transparent manner.”

A Leonardo spokesman said the AW-159 is optimized for the Korean theater of operations, pointing to an active electronically scanned array (AESA) radar for detecting North Korea's coastal weapon system and a missile firing range that is more than three times longer than Seahawk.

“We do not really know about the details of the U.S. Navy's latest proposal,” a Lockheed Martin communications official said, declining to elaborate. “After an RFP is issued, we could be able to discuss with the service.”

Pundits here expressed different reactions to the renewed MOH bidding process.

Shin In-kyun, head of Korea Defense Network, a Seoul-based private defense think tank, said it's a better opportunity to acquire state-of-the-art naval helicopters with better performances.

“The Seahawk is estimated to be more expensive by 20 to 30 percent than the Wildcat, but the former has performances about two times better than the latter,” said Shin. “The unit price of the MH-60R could be lowered through the FMS, as the U.S. and Indian Navies are also said to be procuring more than 40 MH-60Rs.”

Shin Jong-woo, a senior analyst at the Korea Defense & Security Forum, said an FMS deal may not guarantee economic benefit for South Korea.

“You give up offset programs should an FMS deal be made,” he said. “I'm not really sure how much the unit cost of the MH-60R could be lowered. If lowered, we may have to lose some optional functions of the helicopter.”

Moreover, a possible MH-60R selection will bring more work to change the designs of warships, he added.

“The Navy's existing warships, including the KDX-III Aegis destroyer, are not able to accommodate the MH-60R, so it's inevitable to change the design should the American helicopter be chosen.”

The South Korean Navy currently operates eight AW-159s acquired under a 2012 deal. The helicopters fly missions aboard KDX-series destroyers and Incheon-class guided-missile frigates. The service plans to commission at least 12 more new frigates fitted with a flight deck and a hangar that can accommodate one Lynx helicopter.

https://www.defensenews.com/2019/01/23/change-of-plans-seoul-decides-to-start-from-scratch-with-helo-competition

Sur le même sujet

  • Austal USA awarded US$43M LCS contract modification

    25 juin 2020 | International, Naval

    Austal USA awarded US$43M LCS contract modification

    June 18, 2020 - Austal Limited (ASX:ASB) is pleased to announce that the United States Department of Defense has awarded Austal USA a modification to a previously awarded Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) contract. The modification provides Austal with a total potential additional value of US$43,362,000 (approx. A$62,700,000). Work is expected to be complete by June 2021. The contract modification exercises options for LCS Class design services, material to support LCS Class design services and the US Navy's Integrated Data Product Model Environment (IDPME). Austal will provide LCS Class design services to all LCS ships and services may include program management, fitting out services, change processing, software maintenance, engineering and lifecycle efforts. Austal will also maintain an IDPME that shall enable Navy access to enterprise LCS data management. This ASX announcement has been approved and authorised for release by David Singleton, Austal Limited's Chief Executive Officer. -ENDs- Media Contact: Cameron Morse +61 433 886 871 cameron.morse@fticonsulting.com FURTHER INFORMATION Contact: Austal Phone: 61 8 9410 1111 Fax: 61 8 9410 2564 Email: media@austal.com View source version on Austal Limited: https://www.austal.com/news/austal-usa-awarded-us43m-lcs-contract-modification

  • ngility, an SAIC Subsidiary, Selected for $106 Million Defense Intelligence Agency Contract

    19 juin 2019 | International, Autre défense

    ngility, an SAIC Subsidiary, Selected for $106 Million Defense Intelligence Agency Contract

    RESTON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Defense Intelligence Agency's National Media Exploitation Center awarded Engility Corp, a subsidiary of Science Applications International Corp. (NYSE: SAIC), a single-award, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract worth potentially $106 million. As part of the new contract, SAIC will continue to provide media management and analysis work, and will expand these services to include all of the DIA Science and Technology Directorate. “Partnering with the DIA is a privilege we take seriously,” said Michael LaRouche, executive vice president and general manager of SAIC's National Security Customer Group. “Expanding our services to the entire Science and Technology Directorate offers our team of intelligence and data analytics experts a great opportunity to bring value and technological innovation to even more missions.” The IDIQ carries a potential 10-year period of performance. The contract supports NMEC's training, document and media management, program support, and related intelligence operations. The team assists NMEC with document and media exploitation processes like data acquisition, ingest, processing, reporting, and timely dissemination to ensure the chain of command is immediately informed of any changes or developments based on media gathered by the U.S. military and intelligence community. The contract award comes on the heels of SAIC's $2.5 billion acquisition of Engility, completed in January 2019, as part of its strategy to expand its intelligence community portfolio. About SAIC SAIC® is a premier technology integrator solving our nation's most complex modernization and readiness challenges. Our robust portfolio of offerings across the defense, space, civilian, and intelligence markets includes high-end solutions in engineering, IT, and mission solutions. Using our expertise and understanding of existing and emerging technologies, we integrate the best components from our own portfolio and our partner ecosystem to deliver innovative, effective, and efficient solutions. We are 23,000 strong; driven by mission, united by purpose, and inspired by opportunities. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, SAIC has pro forma annual revenues of approximately $6.5 billion. For more information, visit saic.com. For ongoing news, please visit our newsroom. Forward-Looking Statements Certain statements in this release contain or are based on “forward-looking” information within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by words such as “expects,” “intends,” “plans,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “guidance,” and similar words or phrases. Forward-looking statements in this release may include, among others, estimates of future revenues, operating income, earnings, earnings per share, charges, total contract value, backlog, outstanding shares and cash flows, as well as statements about future dividends, share repurchases and other capital deployment plans. Such statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risk, uncertainties and assumptions, and actual results may differ materially from the guidance and other forward-looking statements made in this release as a result of various factors. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause or contribute to these material differences include those discussed in the “Risk Factors,” “Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and “Legal Proceedings” sections of our Annual Report on Form 10-K, as updated in any subsequent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and other filings with the SEC, which may be viewed or obtained through the Investor Relations section of our website at saic.com or on the SEC's website at sec.gov. Due to such risks, uncertainties and assumptions you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. SAIC expressly disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statement provided in this release to reflect subsequent events, actual results or changes in SAIC's expectations. SAIC also disclaims any duty to comment upon or correct information that may be contained in reports published by investment analysts or others. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20190619005487/en

  • Army taps industry for Gray Eagle payloads for joint ops against high-end threats

    4 décembre 2020 | International, Terrestre

    Army taps industry for Gray Eagle payloads for joint ops against high-end threats

    By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Army wants its Joint All Domain Operations (JADO) Gray Eagles to have synthetic aperture radars, moving target indicators, electronic intelligence and communications intelligence capability as well as air-launched effects and radar warning receivers, according to a new market survey. Now, the Army wants help from industry with those payloads for its Gray Eagle unmanned aircraft systems. Specifically, the service is looking for systems that are capable of helping with joint operations across all warfighting domains against high-end threats from adversaries such as China and Russia, according to a solicitation published Dec. 2 to a government contracting website. The service's Aerial Enhanced Radar, Optics and Sensors (AEROS) product manager wants industry to “identify potential existing sources capable of providing Aerial Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (AISR) payloads for the MQ-1C Gray Eagle Unmanned Aircraft System platform that meet the JADO environment,” the solicitation posted to Beta.Sam.Gov states. These Gray Eagles payloads must be capable of increased ranges and resolutions “to support target location and Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF) without the use of traditional line of site visual equipment to include Electro Optical, Infrared (EO/IR) and Full Motion Video (FMV) required for today's Counter Insurgency (COIN) mission,” the request for information stresses. Traditional COIN payloads won't hold up against peer and near-peer adversaries, the Army noted, as they will “employ anti-access, area denial strategies, posing a significant challenge to the current AISR fleet,” the solicitation states. Gray Eagles must survive against an “Integrated Air Defense System (IADS)-rich environment,” the request notes. This means the Gray Eagle would fly “racetrack patterns tangential to the IADS threat at 80 km distance” and would be capable of deploying Air-Launched Effects (ALE) forward into enemy territory to detect, identify and locate targets and take out or disrupt threats, according to the request. The Gray Eagle would also have payloads that could detect IADS threats, locate them and transfer the information to other sensor systems capable of recognizing targets and coordinating long-range fires, the solicitation describes. The Army is conducting the survey ahead of a Gray Eagle sensor payload JADO demonstration that could potentially take place in fiscal 2022 where systems will be “quantitatively compared” to find the highest performing and best value payloads based on technology readiness and production cost, the request lays out. The solicitation for more advanced payloads for Gray Eagle comes at a time when the Army is trying to design a complex architecture of helicopters and unmanned aircraft systems that would be part of tight-knit kill chain to include space and ground assets underpinned by an advanced network. The Army experimented with the kill chain to include air assets at Project Convergence at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, over the summer. The effort brings together future weapons and capabilities envisioned for a 2030s battlefield against near-peer adversaries such as Russia and China. It includes using a machine learning and artificial intelligence-enabled battle management system that is in development. Gray Eagle represented a Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) surrogate. During the first mission thread at Project Convergence, which focused on the penetration phase laid out in the Army's Multidomain Operations warfighting concept, Gray Eagles and ALE partnered with space-based assets, APNT, and LRPF capabilities to locate, then degrade and destroy enemy assets modeled after the Russian Pantsir air defense systems and other weapons. The ALE pushed ingested data forward through the network to get it to the right shooters, whether that would be an Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) system on the ground or a Gray Eagle or another ALE. The Army was able to extend the ALE capability out to almost 62 kilometers, which would provide deep standoff for manned aircraft like FARA. The ALEs performed both the reconnaissance, surveillance and targeting acquisition mission and worked as a mesh network to extend the battlefield. Two ALEs were truck launched and four were air launched. Also during the final shot of the entire campaign at Project Convergence, a soldier on the ground took control of a LRPF munition surrogate (a Hellfire missile in this case) on a Gray Eagle and fired on the target. The Gray Eagle at Convergence was able to route around and avoid threat weapon systems and also fired a live Dynetics-made GBU-69 small glide munition. Previewing the future, the Army also used an open system architecture that was flexible enough for payloads and capabilities to be swapped in out of its Gray Eagles without having to rely on the original equipment manufacturer to do it. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/12/02/army-taps-industry-for-gray-eagle-payloads-for-joint-ops-against-high-end-threats/

Toutes les nouvelles