27 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Tous alignés pour mener la charge. Les présidents des organisations patronales de l'aéronautique, du naval militaire et de l'armement terrestre plaident d'une seule voix afin que l'industrie de défense fasse partie des plans de relance en France, mais aussi en Europe. « C'est absolument fondamental », ont-ils affirmé, lors d'une audition devant la commission de la défense de l'Assemblée nationale.
L'objectif est de préserver la Base industrielle et technologique de défense (BITD) avec ses dizaines de milliers d'emplois hautement qualifiés, répartis sur tout le territoire et le long du littoral. À elles seules, les 400 entreprises aéronautiques membres du Groupement des industries françaises aéronautique et spatiale (Gifas) emploient 200 000 personnes. La filière navale fait travailler 40 000 personnes et les acteurs du terrestre, 20 000. Sans oublier les salariés des milliers de PME et TPE, dont beaucoup de pépites technologiques.
Il s'agit aussi d'assurer aux armées, sursollicitées à l'intérieur et à l'extérieur des frontières nationales, le meilleur niveau d'équipements. Cela, en restant compétitifs face à la concurrence internationale et en pérennisant l'indépendance stratégique militaire du pays.
Face à la crise du Covid-19 qui affecte les industriels de l'armement, « nous proposons un plan de relance pour soutenir la défense, sur le modèle de celui mis en place après la crise financière de 2008 », déclare Stéphane Meyer, président du Gicat (armement terrestre) et PDG du constructeur de blindés Nexter. Le volet défense du plan de relance de 2008 représentait 2,4 milliards d'euros sur un total de 34 milliards. Compte tenu de la profondeur inédite de la crise économique attendue, il faut aller plus loin. « Il est nécessaire d'augmenter les crédits afin d'amplifier la relance de l'industrie de défense, ce qui passe par la hausse de son budget dans la loi de finance 2021 et une révision de la loi de programmation militaire 2019-2025 avec prise en compte des montants absolus et pas du pourcentage du PIB, qui s'est contracté. Cela en affermissant des commandes qui sont encore optionnelles », précise-t-il.
« La commande publique est le meilleur outil pour relancer l'économie », insiste Hervé Guillou, président du Groupement des industries navales (Gican). « Avant de parler de relocalisations, rappelons que l'industrie de défense est déjà localisée en France, et qu'un euro dans le budget français va directement dans l'emploi en France », relève Éric Trappier, président du Gifas et PDG de Dassault Aviation *, constructeur de l'avion de combat Rafale.
À court terme, les entreprises qui tournent avec 20 % à 30 % en moyenne des effectifs ont pour « priorité absolue » la maintenance des matériels, la dissuasion et la défense aérienne. Les grands industriels ont aussi, en liaison avec le ministère des Armées, organisé la solidarité interfilière, afin de repérer les PME les plus en difficultés, dont la défaillance « peut affecter toute l'industrie ».
L'autre combat se déroule sur le front européen. Les États-Unis ont placé l'aéronautique et la défense au premier rang des industries stratégiques dans leur plan de relance. « Est-ce que l'Europe a un plan pour ces industries stratégiques ? Nous discutons avec Thierry Breton (commissaire au Marché intérieur, notamment en charge de la défense, NDLR) afin que le budget de 13 milliards destiné au fonds européen de défense ne soit pas réduit dans le prochain budget de la Commission », souligne Éric Trappier. Le président du Gifas appelle aussi à la reprise et à la réussite des coopérations européennes et à l'instauration - enfin - d'une préférence européenne en matière d'achat de matériels militaires.
« Ce n'est pas le moment de baisser la garde en Europe », martèle Hervé Guillou. « Il faut espérer que la situation fera réfléchir la Direction de la concurrence sur la consolidation européenne, qui est un moyen de créer des champions capables de se défendre contre leurs concurrents étrangers et de se protéger des OPA hostiles », conclut le président du Gican.
Véronique GUILLERMARD
Le Figaro
https://www.asafrance.fr/item/defense-les-industriels-veulent-une-relance.html
28 juin 2021 | International, Naval
The Navy plans to enter into another multi-year contract for the Arleigh Burke-class Flight III destroyers, the acting secretary confirmed to Congress today. The service will sign a contract for Fiscal Year 2023 through 2027, acting Navy Secretary Thomas Harker told the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee. “Multi-year contracts are very important to us. We do …
9 juillet 2020 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
Mark Pomerleau U.S. Cyber Command's new training platform is slated to deliver the second iteration this fall providing additional capabilities and user capacity, program officials said. The Persistent Cyber Training Environment (PCTE) is an online client that allows Cyber Command's warriors to log on from anywhere in the world to conduct individual or collective cyber training as well as mission rehearsal. The program is being run by the Army on behalf of the joint cyber force and Cyber Command. Officials delivered the first version of the program to Cyber Command in February and the environment was used for the first time in Cyber Command's premier annual tier 1 exercise Cyber Flag in June. The second version is expected to include additional capabilities, including allowing more users to conduct team or individual training. “Things like to be able to schedule, have a calendar to be able to auto-schedule things, to be able to allocate resources because right now it's you can get in and you can do it but how do you deconflict? If you're running a team based event across x number of services how does somebody else come in and do an individual training,” Amit Kapadia, chief engineer for the program, told C4ISRNET in an interview. “Do you have the right infrastructure underneath?” Kapadia added that during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a surge in platform use due to the remote working, thus, by the end of this year, the program seeks to push additional compute and network capabilities. Leaders are targeting final testing in September and then a roll out in late fall for version 2.0. The program has also sought to deliver incremental capability along the way through what it calls cyber innovation challenges. These are competitions to awards and layer new technologies onto the platform. There was a notice informing industry of the fourth such innovation challenge released recently. Officials told C4ISRNET they expect to release a formal solicitation around August, with plans to award contracts by the end of the year or early next year. The officials noted that just like with the previous innovation challenges, there could be multiple vendors awarded and specifically non-traditional defense vendors. Moreover, they also anticipate to continue these challenges for the foreseeable future even when a vendor is selected to be the integrator for PCTE through what's known as the Cyber Training, Readiness, Integration, Delivery and Enterprise Technology (TRIDENT), a contract vehicle to offer a more streamlined approach for procuring the military's cyber training capabilities. The contract is valued at up to $957 million. This approach, officials said, prevents vendor lock and ensures the program is at the tip of the technological spear. The fourth cyber innovation challenge seeks to ask industry for assistance in traffic generation – which means emulating fake internet traffic on the platform – and assessment, which was a key requirement directly from Cyber Command. “I would say what we've been driven towards right now are high priorities coming down from [Cyber Command commander] Gen. [Paul] Nakasone and Cyber Command for things like CMF assessment,” Kapadia said. “They want to be able now ... all these reps and sets that are happening within PCTE, how am I assessing the performance of the individuals in my teams.” An integrated and agile approach Since the platform was delivered to Cyber Command in February, command leaders have officially taken the burden of running training exercises from the program office, freeing it up to focus on pursuing new technologies and fixes as well as the overall acquisition. In the past, the program office worked with specific units to conduct training events in order to stress the platform and gain valuable feedback. Now, Cyber Command has created what is called the Joint Cyber Training Enterprise, which is the non-material companion to the PCTE platform and seeks to operate and synchronize training hosted by PCTE for the joint force. “The JCTE is a lot like the combat training center ops group where they are managing the platform, they are running the platform, they are running the training,” Lt. Col. Thomas Monaghan, product manager of cyber resiliency and training at Program Executive Office Simulation, Training and Instrumentation, told C4ISRNET. “So we delivered the platform to them and they're using it I would probably say on a weekly basis. They're doing cyber training events that we don't manage that anymore. We don't stand them up. The platform is being used, we're able to concentrate on specific capability, platform enhancements.” JCTE has formalized the cyber training and use of the environment while also coordinating which cyber mission force units need to conduct which types of training, something the program office wasn't equipped to do. Monaghan said his office is in almost hourly, or at least daily, contact with JCTE to better understand what users like, don't like or needs to be fixed. “We've got the program office, we've got the user community, we've got the operational arm of the user community, which is JCTE, we've got the Army capability manager codifying the requirements all working together. We literally talk to each other at least daily,” Monaghan said. “That direct feedback loop is one continuous circle of information. That's the only way a program this robust can be successful.” Program officials said they gained valuable insights from the recently concluded Cyber Flag, which created roughly six months worth of data. They explained that while not every element worked exactly as planned, the nature of the program allows for incremental and ongoing adjustments to be made. By leveraging specific flexible acquisition tools, the program is not as rigid as other typical military platforms, such as tanks. “It's a perfect one for PCTE because it created that box basically saying in laymen's terms we have no idea what this specifically looks like but we have some eye level things that it should do,” Liz Bledsoe, deputy product manager, told C4SIRNET, regarding the types of acquisition mechanisms PCTE is being run under. Monaghan added: “That's the way the platform and the program were structured when the requirements were written, some of them were listed as evolving or threat based or capability ... They're ever evolving, ever enhancing based off the needs of the cyber mission force.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/cyber/2020/07/07/cyber-command-will-get-a-new-version-of-its-training-platform-this-fall/
16 janvier 2019 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Raytheon will equip the U.S. Marine Corps' classic Hornet fleet with an upgraded APG-79(v)4 AESA radar system. Raython plans to begin delivering the system in 2021 and finish deliveries by 2022 for the Hornet fleet. No specified contract amount was listed in a news release Tuesday announcing the selection by the Marines. Full article: https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2019/01/15/Raytheon-to-equip-classic-Hornet-with-upgraded-radar/7711547564777/