Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - March 19, 2019

Sur le même sujet

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  22 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense

  Pourquoi les Européens n’arrivent pas à convaincre lors de l’achat d’équipements militaires

  Nicolas Gros-Verheyde (B2) Mois après mois, les résultats tombent. Quand ils ont le choix, certains Européens préfèrent acheter américain plutôt qu'européen. Pourquoi ? Un achat de défense n'est pas uniquement un achat En matière de défense, un pays n'achète pas seulement un matériel, il répond à une histoire — tradition maritime, terrestre, etc. —, une géopolitique intérieure — neutralité, non aligné, aligné, autonome —, une affirmation de soi — volonté de prouver au peuple, à ses voisins sa puissance —, un contexte géopolitique — proximité ou non d'adversaires ressentis ou réelle —. La volonté d'avoir une autonomie d'équipements, ou non, découle de tous ces facteurs. La meilleure défense face à un adversaire ... Face à la Russie, nombre de pays européens estiment que la meilleure défense reste les États-Unis. Il ne s'agit donc pas de desserrer les liens qui existent avec les USA, mais de les resserrer. Et le meilleur moyen reste alors les achats d'équipement, qui solidifient de façon claire ce lien euro-atlantique. La duplicité de l'appel à dépenser plus C'est toute la duplicité de l'appel à dépenser davantage pour la défense. Appel largement soutenu par les Américains. Au-delà de l'objectif, justifié, de partage du fardeau entre Européens et Américains, la pression a un objectif purement économique : favoriser l'industrie américaine qui est la seule à répondre à la fois aux objectifs industriel (les matériels), opérationnel (l'interopérabilité), économique (le moins disant) et politique. La panoplie complète des Américains La fourniture des équipements militaires s'accompagne de la logistique, des armements et de la formation. Un ‘package' ordinaire pour ce type d'armements. Mais les Américains ont une panoplie beaucoup plus complète, qui va de l'outil de financement à crédit au soutien logistique dans les opérations extérieures, en passant par la présence de troupes ou de matériels dans les pays concernés, destinés à les rassurer face à des voisins inquiétants, un forcing permanent de leurs politiques, sans oublier l'accueil de jeunes ou moins jeunes officiers ou sous-officiers stagiaires dans leurs écoles. Un effort notable américain de formation Rien que pour la Roumanie, par exemple, pays qui préside actuellement aux destinées de l'Union européenne, ce sont 700 officiers qui franchissent le seuil d'une des écoles militaires US, des écoles de guerre réputées aux simples écoles de gardes nationaux. Cela forge des réflexes, une culture commune, des camaraderies, une solidarité... et l'habitude d'utiliser certains matériels. Peu étonnant ensuite que chacun soit convaincu dans l'armée roumaine qu'il faille acheter ces équipements. Une réflexion à engager Si les Européens veulent un tant soit peu défendre leurs équipements, il va falloir réfléchir sérieusement à se doter de ces cinq outils : les échanges et l'accueil dans les écoles européennes — l'Erasmus militaire prôné dans la fin des années 2000 est un peu tombé dans l'oubli (1) —, le financement croisé, la présence dans les pays (qui ne soit pas dispersée). (Nicolas Gros-Verheyde) https://www.bruxelles2.eu/2019/05/17/pourquoi-les-europeens-narrivent-pas-a-convaincre-lors-de-lachat-dequipements-militaires/

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  21 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Lockheed Martin awarded $76.7M for AEGIS development, test sites

  By Allen Cone June 20 (UPI) -- Lockheed Martin has been awarded a $76.7 million contract for operation and maintenance of AEGIS missile system development and test sites for the U.S. Navy, Missile Defense Agency, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Norway. Work by Lockheed's Rotary and Mission Systems is for the Combat Systems Engineering Development Site, SPY-1A Test Facility and Naval Systems Computing Center in Moorestown, N.J., the Defense Department announced Wednesday. This option exercise includes continued technical engineering, configuration management, associated equipment/supplies, quality assurance, information assurance, and other operation and maintenance efforts required for the AEGIS development and test sites. This option also includes work on upgrades for the Ticonderoga class of guided-missile cruisers, designated as CG-47, and Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers, designated as DDG-51, through the completion of Advanced Capability Build 20 and Technology Insertion 16. Work is expected to be complete by June 2020. This contract modification combines purchases for the U.S. Navy at 34.7 percent, Missile Defense Agency at 22.7 percent, and the governments of Japan at 34.4 percent, Australia at 4.7 percent, South Korea at 2.1 percent and Norway at 1.4 percent under the foreign military sales program. Funding in the amount of $29.7 million has been obligated at time of award and funding in the amount of $4.6 million will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Besides foreign military sales, funding will come from the Navy's fiscal 2014 shipbuilding and conversion; fiscal 2019 Navy operation and maintenance; fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation as well as MDA fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation and fiscal 2019 operation and maintenance. The AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense system is the naval component of the Missile Defense Agency's BMD system, providing warships with the capability of intercepting and destroying short- and medium-range ballistic missiles. As of October 2017, there are 33 ships with the AEGIS system, 17 are assigned to the Pacific Fleet and 16 to the Atlantic Fleet. Japan has four destroyers that have been upgraded with AEGIS BMD operational capabilities. The first deployment of European capabilities came on March 7, 2011, aboard the USS Monterey. AEGIS Ashore is the land-based component of the system. The deckhouse and launchers are designed to be nearly identical to the version installed aboard U.S. Navy destroyers and cruisers. https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2019/06/20/Lockheed-Martin-awarded-767M-for-AEGIS-development-test-sites/3571561038521/

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  21 octobre 2020 | International, Terrestre

  MPF: Light Tank Competitors BAE & GD Head For Soldier Tests

  BAE and General Dynamics are vying to build 504 Mobile Protected Firepower vehicles to support light infantry units, especially in places the massive M1 Abrams cannot go. SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. WASHINGTON: After 24 years without a light tank in Army service, soldiers will climb aboard brand-new Mobile Protected Firepower prototypes this January. “It's not just PowerPoint” anymore, Maj. Gen. Bryan Cummings, the Army's Program Executive Officer for Ground Combat Systems (PEO-GCS), told me in an interview. “On Jan. 4th, we will have ... vehicles arriving at Fort Bragg.” Army experts have already started safety testing on prototype MPF vehicles, officials told me. Actual combat soldiers will start training on two platoons of prototypes in January – four MPFs from BAE, four from rival General Dynamics – with field tests scheduled to begin in April. A formal Limited User Test will start in August or September, with the Army choosing the winning design in 2022 and the first operational unit of MPF entering active service in 2025. A General Dynamics spokesperson told me they've already delivered five MPF prototypes to the Army, with two more in final checkouts and another five being built for delivery by the end of the year. BAE Systems is also building 12 prototypes, but they declined to say whether they'd delivered vehicles yet or not. While the Army can't comment on either contractor while the competition is ongoing, Cummings said, “both are on track to meet the major milestones” – despite the disruptions of COVID-19. After three months of training, the troops will start what's being called the Soldier Vehicle Assessment (SVA): four to five months of intensive field testing, including force-on-force wargames. It's all part of the Army's new emphasis on getting real soldiers' feedback on new weapons early and often. “The soldiers actually get to drive the vehicles around, shoot them, train with them,” BAE business developer James Miller told me. “Their feedback [is] likely to be the most critical factor ... in the decision the Army's going to make about who wins this contract.” The soldier assessment isn't just testing out the vehicles, however, Cummings told me: It's also a test of the Army. Specifically, how can light infantry brigades, which today have few vehicles or mechanics, sustain and operate a 20-plus-ton tank? The crucial distinction: MPF is not going to the Army's heavy brigades, which have lots of support troops and specialized equipment to take care of tracked armored vehicles. Instead, 14 MPFs per brigade will go to airborne and other light infantry units, which haven't had tracked armor since the M551 Sheridan was retired and its replacement cancelled in 1990s. Now, MPF won't be as fuel-hungry or maintenance-intensive as the massive M1 Abrams, America's mainstay main battle tank. Even with add-on armor kits for high-threat deployments, it'll be less than half as heavy as the M1. That's because MPF isn't meant to take on enemy tanks, at least not modern ones. Instead, it's designed to be light enough to deploy rapidly by air, simple enough to sustain at the end of a long and tenuous supply line, but potent enough to take on enemy light armored vehicles, bunkers, dug-in machineguns, and the like. That's a tricky balance to strike. In fact, the Army has never found a light tank it really liked despite decades of trying. Only six M22 Locusts actually fought in World War II, the M41 Walker Bulldog was too heavy for airborne units, the M551 Sheridan was plagued by technical problems throughout its service from Vietnam to Panama, the M8 Armored Gun System and the Future Combat System were both cancelled. So how do BAE and General Dynamics plan to square this circle? General Dynamics emphasized lethality in their interview with me. Their Lima tank plant builds the M1 Abrams, and while the MPF is smaller – though the company didn't divulge details, GD's version reportedly has a 105mm cannon, compared to the Abrams' 120mm – it will have the same fire controls and electronics as the latest model of its big brother. “If you sat in a Mobile Protected Firepower turret, you would think you were sitting in a [M1] SEPV3 turret,” a GD spokesperson told me. “It's all the same displays, architectures, power distribution, etc.” GD's design evolved from their Griffin demonstrators, prominently displayed for several years at AUSA annual meetings. It's got automotive components derived from the ASCOD/Ajax family widely used in Europe and an 800 horsepower engine. GD didn't tell me how much their vehicle weighed, but, depending on the armor package installed, the demonstrators ranged from 28 tons to 50 tons. Those figures would give horsepower/weight ratios ranging from 28 hp/ton, better than any model of the Abrams, to 16, which would make MPF much more sluggish. BAE, by contrast, emphasized their design's compactness and ease of maintenance – considerations as critical as firepower for a light infantry unit. BAE actually built the M8 AGS cancelled in the '90s drawdown, and while they've thoroughly overhauled that design for MPS with a new engine, new electronics, and underbody blast-proofing against roadside bombs, they've tried to preserve its airborne-friendly qualities. “The old M8 fit inside a C-130; in fact, it was air droppable,” Miller told me. “There's no requirement for that in the current MPF program, but we decided to stick with that as a design constraint: [Our MPF can] fit inside a C-130; we can do three on a C-17.” BAE's engine is less potent than GD's, with only 550 horsepower. With the base configuration coming in at under 30 tons, that equates to over 18 hp/ton, with heavier armor packages reducing performance from there. But the big selling point of the engine is ease of access, Miller argued. Engine maintenance on a tank requires a crane and partially disassembling the armor, but a mechanic can slide the BAE MPF's engine in and out of the chassis with a hand crank. If the MPF breaks down or gets stuck, it can be towed away by a truck, without requiring a special heavy recovery vehicle as an M1 does. “The infantry brigades are light. They don't have long logistics tails. They don't have a ton of mechanics and recovery vehicles,” Miller emphasized. “The vehicle has to be as mobile as them and fit inside their organization.” The Army estimates the life-cycle cost of MPF, from development to procurement to maintenance and retirement, at $16 billion. Whichever vehicle wins the Army contract will have an edge in sales worldwide – including, potentially, to the Marine Corps, which is retiring its M1s as too heavy for modern amphibious warfare. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/10/mpf-light-tank-competitors-bae-gd-head-for-soldier-tests/