6 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

Esper: Flat budget could speed cutting of legacy programs

By: Aaron Mehta

WASHINGTON — If the Pentagon faces tighter budgets in the coming years, departmental planners should look to cut legacy programs first in order to preserve funding for modernization requirements, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters Tuesday.

“Frankly, my inclination is not to risk any in the modernization programs; it's to go back and pull out more of the legacy programs,” Esper said in response to a question about what modernization priorities, such as shipbuilding, might be on the table.

“We need to move away from legacy [programs] and we need to invest those dollars into the future. We have a lot of legacy programs out there right now. I could pick dozens out from all branches of the services. So that is where I would start,” he continued.

“What that would mean is probably accepting some near-term risk, but I think that is something [that has to happen], given the trajectory that we see China is on, and we know where Russia may be going in the coming years. So that is one place where I would begin, but we're going to be working through this course of action.”

The secretary also emphasized that he's not going to “risk the strategic deterrent,” reiterating that modernizing America's nuclear capabilities remains the department's top priority.

Budgets were already expected to be flat or decline slightly in the coming years before the coronavirus pandemic, which has required the U.S. government to pump trillions of dollars into the economy. Esper said that “tremendous load” is something the department must consider as it plots a budget strategy for fiscal 2022 and beyond.

His comments match what the secretary said Monday during an appearance at the Brookings Institution, where he said the spending spree in response to the spread of COVID-19 means the department's ongoing efforts to find internal efficiencies must continue to bear fruit.

The department claimed savings of $6.5 billion in FY19 through process reforms and the sale of obsolete equipment, with another $5.7 billion in spending reallocated from legacy programs to modernization priorities.

During the Brookings event, Esper noted that the department will “likely need” extra money from Congress if a fourth coronavirus supplemental fund is worked out, in order to help cover costs for medical supplies procured by the Pentagon.

At the start of his press event, the secretary used prepared remarks to note that top defense leaders will be appearing at the Senate Armed Services Committee tomorrow to discuss the Federal Communications Commission's decision to allow Ligado to operate in the L-band spectrum, a move long opposed by the department because of concerns it will negatively impact GPS.

Esper said the decision “disregards the many objections of industry and the inner agency, grounded in years of hard data and science. Ultimately this will cause harmful interference to the GPS network, jeopardizing our nation's security, prosperity and way of life.”

The secretary declined to comment on why the FCC moved ahead with the decision. C4ISRNET, a sister publication of Defense News, has reported the decision came amid political pressure from top Trump administration officials.

https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2020/05/05/esper-flat-budget-could-speed-cutting-legacy-programs/

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  • Textron is no longer working with the Air Force on an airworthiness assessment for the Scorpion jet. But these two companies are.

    26 juillet 2018 | International, Aérospatial

    Textron is no longer working with the Air Force on an airworthiness assessment for the Scorpion jet. But these two companies are.

    By: Valerie Insinna LONDON — In 2016, the Air Force opened a new office to evaluate the airworthiness of military aircraft it didn't plan to buy, thus making it easier for those U.S. companies to sell internationally. Now its flagship effort with Textron's Scorpion jet has been suspended. After moving through the first phase of the airworthiness assessment, Textron decided to step away from the process, Bill Harris, Textron's vice president for Scorpion sales, confirmed in a July 14 interview. The reason, he said, is that the company opted to pool its financial resources in support of its AT-6 Wolverine turboprop that the Air Force is evaluating as part of the light attack experiment. If turned into a program of record, that opportunity could be worth several hundred planes. “AT-6 is a very important program,” Harris told Defense News at the Royal International Air Tattoo. “Any smart company moves their resources where they need to go, and all of our efforts with the Scorpion are privately funded.” The Air Force announced in July 2016 that it had signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, or CRADA, with Textron. The agreement was the first of its kind, aimed at allowing the Air Force to gain insight into technologies they aren't purchasing and to clear away some of the evaluations that must be done before a sale to a foreign nation. That agreement — along with the opening of a new Non-DoD Military Aircraft Office (NDMAO)— garnered much media attention in the months following. In an August 2016 interview, the head of the NDMA office said that a CRADA to assess the Lockheed Martin-Korean Aerospace Industries F/A-50 was soon to be signed, and that another agreement for a different aircraft could be on its heels. However, no such agreement on the F/A-50 or any other aircraft ever surfaced, and the work of the NDMAO faded into obscurity. Textron may have suspended its efforts to assess the Scorpion jet, but the NDMAO is working on two active projects, said Robert FitzHarris, the deputy director of the service's airworthiness office, in a statement. One involves the an agreement between the Air Force and General Atomics to conduct an airworthiness assessment of the MQ-9B SkyGuardian drone and the SeaGuardian, its maritime variant, he said. The CRADA is the first between the office an a maker of unmanned aircraft. In essence, SkyGuardian is a version of the MQ-9 Reaper that will be certified to fly in any airspace safely. The drone has already found its first customer: the United Kingdom, which could buy anywhere from 21 to 26 copies. Beyond that, the airworthiness assessment could raise the confidence levels of other countries interested in buying SkyGuardian. And, importantly, it gives the U.S. Air Force a window into the MQ-9B's capabilities — which could help SkyGuardian break into the U.S. market. IOMAX is also engaged in a CRADA with the Air Force for an assessment of its Archangel turboprop aircraft, FitzHarris said. Like General Atomics, IOMAX has sold the Archangel internationally, but the addition of an airworthiness assessment from the Air Force may help attract new customers or pave the way for speedier sales. Both the General Atomics and Iomax efforts are still in Phase 1, where the Air Force and company lay out an “airworthiness assessment basis” that establishes a common understanding of how the airworthiness of a given aircraft would have been evaluated and graded. Phase 2 revolves around submitting test reports, risk assessments and engineering data to the Air Force, who then conducts a technical assessment based on that data. “We don't do flight testing. We simply rely upon the data provided by the collaborator," FitzHarris told Defense News in 2016, when he was leading the NDMA office. "There's testing, analysis, all of these things that typically feed into an assessment,” he said. “We have the technical expertise to take that [...] and give an assessment of compliance. Where there is compliance lacking or data lacking, we're going to assess risk and then we provide that information in an assessment package back to the collaborator." Textron is open to restarting the airworthiness assessment effort for Scorpion in the future, provided it's able to nail down a first customer to help offset the expense of doing the evaluations, Harris said. "[Once] we that launch customer, then we'll re-initiate that program,” he said. “Until we get that, being privately funded and not a program of record with the air force, that continues to be all on our nickel.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/riat/2018/07/25/textron-is-no-longer-working-with-the-air-force-on-an-airworthiness-assessment-for-the-scorpion-jet-but-these-two-companies-are/

  • New head of Strategic Capabilities Office wants to focus on AI

    24 septembre 2018 | International, C4ISR

    New head of Strategic Capabilities Office wants to focus on AI

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  • Croatian lawmakers back new armored vehicles, Spike anti-tank missiles

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