Elbit Systems Awarded a $55 Million Contract to Supply a Counter UAS Solution to the Netherlands

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  30 décembre 2022 | International, Aérospatial

  New in 2023: Welcoming new airframes to the fleet

  The Air Force hopes to show off the B-21 Raider bomber's first flight in 2023 — though that target has been pushed back multiple times.

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  23 janvier 2019 | International, Terrestre

  India launches first private-sector howitzer facility

  Rahul Bedi, New Delhi - Jane's Defence Weekly India's Larsen & Toubro (L&T) officially launched the country's first private-sector Armoured Systems Complex (ASC) on 19 January, in which the Indian Army's (IA's) K-9 Vajra (Thunderbolt) – a variant of the Hanwha Techwin K-9 Thunder 155 mm/52-calibre tracked self-propelled howitzer (SPH) – is already being built. Spread over 40 acres and located in the western coastal town of Hazira, the ASC, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, will be used to construct and integrate armoured platforms such as SPHs, future infantry combat vehicles and main battle tanks under the government's ‘Make in India' initiative. The company pointed out in a statement that it has already built 10 of the 100 K-9 SPHs ordered by the IA in mid-2017 for INR45 billion (USD630 million), which were handed over to the IA in November 2018: several months ahead of schedule. Delivery of the remaining SPHs is expected to be completed within the next 22 months. According to Ministry of Defence spokesperson Colonel Aman Anand, the first K-9 Vajra regiment is set to become operational by July. L&T pointed out in its statement that the K-9 Vajra, which was jointly developed by L&T and South Korea's Hanwha Techwin, is being produced with 50% indigenous content, which involves the local production of more than 13,000 components per gun by about 500 different manufacturers. https://www.janes.com/article/85878/india-launches-first-private-sector-howitzer-facility

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  11 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

  This is who Congress wants in charge of new hypersonic-tracking sensors

  By: Nathan Strout Congress wants the Missile Defense Agency to take the lead on developing a space-based sensor layer capable of tracking hypersonic weapons, despite a number of objections made by the Trump administration earlier this year. The administration claimed in a Sept. 4 letter that selecting a lead agency for the sensor layer this early “would limit DoD's ability to establish the most cost-effective missile defense architecture for the nation,” but the conference committee apparently brushed those concerns aside to place the project squarely in the hands of the MDA in their report on the annual National Defense Authorization Act, released Dec. 9. The Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor would be a new addition to the nation's missile defense architecture, supplementing the current Space-based Infrared System and the future Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared system in detecting and tracking ballistic weapons from space. Unlike those two systems, however, HBTSS is specifically designed to detect and track hypersonic weapons as well. Compared to traditional ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons are faster, maneuverable and dimmer when viewed from space. Both SBIRS and Next Gen OPIR were designed for ballistic missile threats and are ill suited for tracking the dimmer, faster targets presented by hypersonics. HBTSS meets that challenge in two main ways. First, unlike the two previous systems operating in geosynchronous orbit, HBTSS will be located in low-Earth orbit — far closer to the action. Being that much closer allows them to overcome the dimness of hypersonic threats in order to effectively track them. Secondly, the HBTSS sensors are meant to pass information from satellite to satellite, allowing uninterrupted tracking even as the hypersonic weapons move quickly out of view of any one satellite. The fate of the sensor layer has been up in the air for much of the year. The MDA didn't include the effort in its fiscal year 2020 budget, but listed it among their unfunded priorities in a report to Congress, asking for $108 million for the project. Authorization for that funding was included in both the House and Senate versions of the legislation, and unsurprisingly has been included in the conference report. To date, HBTSS has been a combined effort split between multiple organizations — primarily the MDA, the Space Development Agency and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. While the MDA is in charge of the actual payload, DARPA's Project Blackjack has served as a prototype effort for the design of the new sensor layer. Meanwhile, the SDA was established earlier this year to build a new multilayered space architecture in low-Earth orbit, of which HBTSS would comprise one layer. The dividing issue between the two legislative bodies was whether to put the MDA firmly in charge of the operation or continue to let it develop between the MDA and the Space Development Agency, an organization stood up earlier this year to create a new space architecture comprised of hundreds of small satellites providing a variety of capabilities in low-Earth orbit. While the Senate wanted to have the MDA take the lead on development and deployment of HBTSS, the House supported a coordinated approach with responsibility shared between the MDA, the SDA and the Air Force. “This is one of the interesting boundary cases that is going to keep coming up between what do you give to the space service and what do you keep in the other agencies and services,” said Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “In this case, the MDA had already been working on the payload, and so I think there was a lot of angst in taking the MDA's work on that and giving it to another organization where it might lose some momentum.” The conference report comes down on the Senate side of the equation, directing the secretary of defense to assign primary responsibility for the development and deployment of HBTSS with the MDA. The legislation would also require the secretary to submit a plan for how the agency will work with the SDA and the Air Force to develop and integrate the payload. https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2019/12/10/this-is-who-congress-wants-in-charge-of-new-hypersonic-tracking-sensors