Contracts for July 22, 2021

Sur le même sujet

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  7 août 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  The light attack aircraft competition will be down to two competitors

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The Air Force is preparing to begin buying light attack aircraft next year — and the winner is going to be either Textron's AT-6 Wolverine or the Sierra Nevada Corp.-Embraer A-29 Super Tucano. According to a pre-solicitation posted on FedBizOpps on Aug. 3, the service will put out a final request for proposals to the two competitors in December with the hopes of awarding a contract by the end of September 2019. However, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek told Defense News on Monday that service leaders have not yet made a final decision on whether to green-light a program of record. Should that happen, the pre-solicitation will ensure that the service can move as quickly as it would like to eventually procure new planes, she said. If the new weapons program moves forward, it appears the service will limit the competition to the two aircraft currently involved in the service's light attack experiment. The pre-solicitation states that SNC and Textron Aviation “are the only firms that appear to possess the capability necessary to meet the requirement within the Air Force's time frame without causing an unacceptable delay in meeting the needs of the warfighter.” The Air Force's decision to only consider the A-29 and AT-6 had been foreshadowed by officials like Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, its top uniformed acquisition officer, who repeatedly stated that the service would likely limit a competition to those two participants. Full Article: https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/08/06/the-light-attack-aircraft-competition-will-be-down-to-two-competitors/

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  10 octobre 2019 | International, C4ISR

  The data challenge of space-based hypersonics defense

  By: Nathan Strout Managing data is the biggest challenge to developing a new space-based sensor layer that would help detect hypersonic weapons, the director of the Missile Defense Agency said Oct. 7. The agency is working toward building the Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor, a layer of sensors on orbit that would be capable of detecting and tracking hypersonic weapons that the nation's current missile defense architecture was not designed to handle. The new system will be built into the Space Development Agency's constellation of low earth orbit satellites. For Vice Adm. Jon Hill, the director of the agency, designing the sensors for the system is a surmountable engineering issue and evolving commercial launch capabilities mean it will be easy to get the technology to space once its ready. The real challenge is “the passing of track data between different space vehicles and maintaining track and dealing with clutter.” Hypersonic weapons are dimmer than traditional ballistic missiles, making them harder to detect. The sensors will have to be able to remove that clutter, detect the threat and then pass their data to the next LEO sensor, which will pick up the object as it travels around the globe at hypersonic speed. Allowing for that data flow from sensor to sensor is essential to the effective operation of the system. Hill compared the complexity of that data transfer to his time in the Navy, where information had to go between moving vessels, but the data issue with satellites is magnitudes of order more difficult. “When you put yourself on a moving body that's moving, not at 30 knots but at a much higher speed, you know, maintaining the stability of that track, being able to pull the clutter out of it, determining how much you want to process up on orbit versus how much you want to feed down and process on the ground, then how you distribute. Do you distribute directly from the sensor? Do you control the weapon from space? Or do you take it to the ground station and do it there? There [are] different trades, and we'll probably do it differently in a lot of different ways because that adds to the overall resilience of the system,” Hill said speaking at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event October 7. Finding the right answers to those questions will be a priority for the MDA as it works to works to get the system on orbit quickly. “It's going to be a great capability. We just need to get it up there as soon as we can and rapidly proliferate,” Hill said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2019/10/09/the-data-challenge-of-space-based-hypersonics-defense/

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  26 juillet 2018 | International, Naval

  BAE Systems progresses digital shipyard plan for Australia

  Jon Grevatt, Bangkok BAE Systems is moving ahead with its programme to transform naval shipbuilding facilities in South Australia into a digital shipyard that will support the construction of the Royal Australian Navy's (RAN's) new Hunter-class frigates. The company was selected for the nine-ship frigate programme earlier in July – under the AUD35 billion (USD26 billion) Sea 5000 project – and will build the ships in collaboration with state-owned naval shipbuilder ASC from late 2020. The Hunter-class is a variant of BAE Systems' Type 26 frigate design, which the company is also building for the UK Royal Navy (RN). While contract negotiations are ongoing between BAE Systems and the Australian government to finalise the details of the Sea 5000 project, work to prepare Adelaide-based ASC's shipbuilding facilities is under way, with BAE Systems already committed to investing at least AUD100 million (USD74 million) to develop the proposed digital shipyard at which the ships will be built. Nigel Stewart, BAE Systems managing director for the Sea 5000 project, said the digital shipyard will be supported by an “unprecedented” transfer of intellectual property and technical data that will facilitate the development of local capability to both build and maintain the Hunter-class frigates over its 30-year life span. “The digital design of one of the world's most sophisticated ships will support the development of a continuous naval shipbuilding capability in Australia, ensuring that local industry can build the fleet of nine future frigates,” said Stewart. “The digital design will also ensure they can be upgraded and supported during their decades of service.” He added, “This is an unprecedented transfer of intellectual property that will also include all ship parts, materials, and systems used to build the Type 26 frigate. With this knowledge, Australian industry will gain the know-how needed to both build and optimise the ship over its life, potentially improving its flexibility and performance with bespoke local innovation and technology.” http://www.janes.com/article/81959/bae-systems-progresses-digital-shipyard-plan-for-australia