Congress would approve A-10 retirements, more F-35s in defense bill

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  10 avril 2024 | International, Sécurité

  Custom-made Awareness Raising to enhance Cybersecurity Culture

  The European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) empowers organisations by publishing the updated version of the ‘Awareness Raising in a Box’.

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  30 novembre 2018 | International, Terrestre

  With nod to Paris, MBDA claims lead on EU tank-killing missile

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — Missile-maker MBDA is banking on a new European Union project to help boost wider adoption of its Missile Moyenne Portée anti-tank weapon on the continent. The confidence by executives stems from last week's European Council approval of a Beyond-Line-of-Sight Land Battlefield Missile System. The project is one of 34 efforts under the union's new Permanent Structured Cooperation scheme, or PESCO. The framework is meant to unify military capabilities of the member nations with an eye toward establishing the EU as a military player on the world stage. The new missile project offers an glimpse into PESCO's nascent process for turning political ambitions into actual hardware made by national vendors. Such is the case here, says MBDA, which released a statement saying its MMP anti-tank weapon had been “endorsed” by the EU even though the official, one-paragraph project description makes no mention of a specific weapon. Company executives told Defense News that the MMP is what defense officials in France — which has the project lead together with Belgium and Cyprus — had in mind from the start when offering the project under an EU umbrella. The weapon, they argue, is the natural choice because it is already in service with French forces and because it is the sole wholly European option available. (MBDA is a joint venture of Airbus, BAE Systems and Leonardo.) A spokeswoman for the French delegation to the EU in Brussels did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The guided MMP, which boasts a range of 4 kilometers, can be fired by dismounted soldiers or from vehicles. Its competitors include the American-made Javelin and variants of the Spike, designed by Israel's Rafael. The Israelis market their offering through the Germany-based company Eurospike, and the missiles are produced in that country. But MBDA argues the “design authority” for both competitors lies outside of Europe, which means the joint venture would be ineligible for a role — and funding — under PESCO or its associated funding stream, the proposed €13 billion (U.S. $15 billion) European Defence Fund. It remains to be seen whether the apparent PESCO blessing can help propel the MMP weapon to greater popularity in European armies. There is already lower-hanging fruit included in the partnership with project co-sponsor Belgium: Brussels plans to buy a new fleet of armored combat vehicles from France's Nexter, a portion of which stands to be equipped with an anti-tank weapon. That's where EU funding support could come into play. Players of any PESCO project can get EU co-financing for the modification work required to make one weapon interoperable for several partner forces. On paper, the EU missile project has ambitious goals. The weapon eventually chosen — presumably the MMP — “is intended to be integrated on an extensive variety of platforms,” a PESCO project overview states. “The project includes joint training and formation aspects. A dedicated ‘users club' is envisioned develop a common European doctrine on BLOS firing.” Industry officials expect an initial kickoff meeting of the partner nations to hammer out a way ahead, though the timing is unclear. At that point, there could be a formal commitment to the MMP weapon. MBDA, for its part, is painting a purely altruistic picture of what's to come for the missile. “France is opening a collaborative approach for how to use it,” a spokesman told Defense News. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/11/29/with-nod-to-paris-mbda-claims-lead-on-eu-tank-killing-missile

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  10 août 2020 | International, Terrestre

  Government watchdog warns of cost and technical risk for next-gen combat vehicle effort

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Government Accountability Office is warning the Army its approach to cost estimates and technical development for its Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program is risky and should be amended, according to an August 6 report. The Army has already struggled to get the OMFV program, intended to replace the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, off the ground, canceling its previous solicitation to compete after receiving just one bid from General Dynamics Land Systems last fall. And GAO, in its report, is concerned that the service's newest attempt to get after delivering an OMFV comes with risk because the program documentation “does not clearly communicate the uncertainty associated with projected costs” and limits the program's “ability to gather the knowledge to effectively mitigate risk associated with system design maturity.” For one, the Army has come up with a singular cost estimate for the life-cycle of the program rather than a range of potential costs that takes uncertainty into account, according to the report. The OMFV program cost estimate, the report notes, is roughly $46 billion in fiscal 2019 dollars. “Our past work has determined that a point estimate alone is insufficient for managers to make informed decisions about the cost of a program,” the GAO writes. “For informed decisions, the cost estimate must reflect a degree of uncertainty, typically achieved through an uncertainty analysis, so that level of confidence can be given about the estimate.” For example, the OMFV program will be optionally manned, “which adds complexity and unknowns to the design as no vehicle like this currently exists in the Army's ground vehicle fleet,” the GAO said. “But the uncertainty surrounding this complex design is not reflected in the point estimate.” And because of this “decision makers are left making choices without a clear understanding of the impact on costs and may not be able to accurately budget for the program,” the report states. The constrained development schedule for OMFV is also a cause for concern as it inevitably drives risk into the program. GAO notes the Army had laid out, in its previous solicitation, a plan to design and demonstrate an OMFV prototype in three years and three months, but has since spread the schedule out a bit more with the relaunch of the program and now plans to complete system development and prototype demonstration in “close to” five years. The new solicitation also lays out a five-phase effort that will allow the Army to reassess the process at certain checkpoints throughout development, according to the report. The GAO also found promise in the Army's plan to use a modular open systems architecture to incorporate incremental upgrades. In the Army's previous plan for OMFV it also planned to use a mix of existing and new technologies but, the GAO report states, the program did not include plans to complete an independent technology readiness assessment until it was approaching a production decision. According to the Office of the Under Secretary for Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, in a report to Congress, “the least mature technology for OMFV had only been demonstrated at the component level in a laboratory environment,” the report notes, adding that the level of technology maturity would require “significant” additional development before it could be added to a weapon system. “The Army is maturing, or has plans to mature, individual technologies to a level lower than the threshold recommended by leading practices before beginning system development,” the report says. “This creates a danger of limited insight into key technology risks.” Critical technologies, GAO states, should be demonstrated in “an operational or realistic environment — not simply in a relevant environment — prior to their incorporation into a system design to ensure that they work as intended for the end-user.” The GAO adds, based on past experience, that without proving out technology at that level, the Army risks the possibility that new capabilities won't work as planned and will require further maturation, which results in schedule slips and rising costs. In the previous competition, OMFV didn't hold a systems engineering design review before beginning system development and the Army canceled the solicitation “in part due to the conclusion that contractors could not complete a system design that met requirements within the given schedule,” the report notes, which “illustrates the risk of beginning system development without conducting a systems engineering design review.” Program officials told the GAO that the program office and requirements developers “may have misjudged the ability of contractors to integrate the desired technology within the given schedule.” The GAO recommends the Army secretary direct the OMFV program office to include a range of cost estimates to support a range of possible outcomes as well as conduct systems engineering reviews at key decision points. The report also lays out similar findings on the Mobile Protected Firepower program, which is heading into competitive prototype testing this summer. General Dynamics Land Systems and BAE Systems are competing to build the new light tank for Army infantry. The GAO recommended the Army should ensure the MPF program also include a range of cost estimates that account for uncertainty. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/06/government-watchdog-warns-of-cost-and-technical-risk-for-next-gen-combat-vehicle-effort/