Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - January 4, 2019

Sur le même sujet

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  26 mars 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  AFRL directed energy industry days

  Kirtland NM (AFRL) Mar 24, 2021 - The Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate will host a Virtual Briefing for Industry to introduce the new Directed Energy Technology Experimentation Research (DETER), Advanced Res

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  11 juin 2020 | International, Terrestre

  The next few months are ‘critical’ for the Army’s new helicopter engine

  By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The Army's Improved Turbine Engine Program is facing a “critical” stretch which will determine whether testing on the engine will occur on time or be delayed, thanks to challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, a pair of Army officials said Wednesday. Patrick Mason, the program executive officer for Army aviation, and Brig. Gen. Walter Rugen, the director for future vertical lift inside Army Futures Command, said that the service has finished its component critical design review (CDR) process, and has moved on to its full program CDR, a key milestone before moving into testing. However, “given COVID and all of the factors that have gone on with COVID,” the plan to have the full CDR done during second quarter has been pushed to third quarter, Mason said at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation. ITEP is “the number one watch item we've had across the future vertical lift portfolio for COVID impacts,” Mason said, because “hardware needs to be coming in the latter part of this year so we can test at the component level, assemble into the engine, and then go to first engine test.” “So that's going to be critical over the next month to two months, to see where we stand on hardware deliveries with that, and then whether or not we will reach first engine test at the time that we had originally stated,” he said, noting the plan is for engine tests to proceed in 2021. Mason also noted that the delay is less dramatic than it may seem, because the original plan for ITEP called for the full CDR to be completed in the fourth quarter of this year; the Army felt it was ahead of schedule enough to shift that target to second quarter, until COVID caused the delay. In other words, CDR being completed in Q3 still means the program is ahead of its original baseline. General Electric Aviation won the $517 million award for the engineering, manufacturing and development phase in February 2019. The requirements included developing a 3,000 shaft horsepower engine that reduces fuel consumption by 25 percent and increases service life by 20 percent compared to the legacy T700 currently used in the Army's AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters. In addition to replacing the engines on those two leacy platforms, ITEP is expected to power the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft, or FARA design. For the heavier future rotorcraft known as the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA, the Army is looking at a heavier engine design, although the companies competing for the design will have the ability to pick their own engine designs as part of their pitches. “We really think the efficiencies there with a two engines strategy across all of Army aviation's tactical fleet would be a powerful way to go at both readiness and affordability concerns,” said Rugen. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/06/10/the-next-few-months-are-critical-for-the-armys-new-helicopter-engine/

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  20 juin 2019 | International, Naval

  Navy: Next Large Surface Combatant Will Look A Lot Like Zumwalt

  By: Ben Werner WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Navy's next large surface combatant will probably look more like the futuristic Zumwalt class of guided-missile destroyers than fleet's current workhorse class of Arleigh Burke destroyers, the program executive officer said. Navy and industry designers are talking about increased payloads, increased computing and increased design flexibility when considering the possible capabilities of the fleet's next large surface combatant, Rear Adm. William Galinis, the Navy's program executive officer for ships, said during the American Society of Naval Engineering's annual Technology, Systems & Ship symposium on Tuesday. Designers also have to consider that the Navy now plans to operate in an increasingly contested environment, which means taking into account how adversaries will see the new ship class on radars. “The signature aspect of it, what does that do to the shaping of deckhouse hull form. I will tell you, not to predispose anything, but I think in the end, you know, it's probably going to look a lot more like a DDG-1000 than a DDG-51 if I had to say so,” Galinis said. “But there's still a lot of work to kind of go do in that area.” Galinis was speaking during the opening keynote address at the 2019 TSS conference. Rear Adm. Lorin Selby, the Navy's chief engineer and deputy commander for ship design at Naval Sea Systems Command, joined Galinis during the keynote. The Navy had planned to buy the first of its new class of large surface combatant in 2023, but Galinis said the Navy has since pushed back the start date. USNI News first reported the Navy now is looking at awarding a contract in Fiscal Year 2025. The current Arleigh Burke-class multi-year contract expires in 2022. By pushing back the production timeline, Galinis said the Navy can refine its requirements now and incorporate feedback from industry and current programs to help improve the ship design and control costs. As an example, Galinis said the Navy continues learning from the DDG-1000 program. The Navy is applying a lot of acquisition and production lessons learned from the Zumwalt class experience to the Columbia-class submarine program, Galinis said. “When you start thinking about large surface combatant, that's going to be a key element of that acquisition strategy,” Galinis said. At the same time, the current emphasis on developing new ships is increasing the demand for ship design expertise, Selby said. He wants to establish a constant design workflow so the Navy doesn't lose talent during the years between ship major designs. “There's a lot of design work across the enterprise,” Selby said. “We really have to work hard to build that talent base back up.” When introducing Galinis and Selby, retired Navy Capt. Richard White, the TSS 2019 committee chair, said Secretary of the Navy Richard V. Spencer had requested that conference attendees not ask questions about aircraft carriers. During his keynote address highlighting recent advances naval ship design, Galinis merely said, “the one new design over the last couple of years is obviously the Ford-class carrier, but we're not going to talk a lot about that over the next couple of days.” During the second day of TSS 2019, White provided clarification to his previous comments regarding the discussion of aircraft carriers. When planning this year's conference, the decision was made to focus on surface ships. There was no direction from the Navy regarding asking about aircraft carriers. “I did not receive any direction from the Secretary of the Navy,” White said. https://news.usni.org/2019/06/19/navy-next-large-surface-combatant-will-look-a-lot-like-zumwalt