Estonia increases defense spending to buy air defense systems, more weapons

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  11 juin 2018 | International, C4ISR

  Pentagon’s Second Multibillion Cloud Contract to Be Bid in Coming Months

  Officials say the Defense Department's multibillion Defense Enterprise Office Solutions contract is expected to be bid out in the fourth quarter of this fiscal year. Much of the oxygen in the federal contracting community has gone to the Pentagon's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract in recent months, but the Pentagon is very close to bidding out a second major cloud contract that may rival it in size. Defense officials said last month that the Defense Enterprise Office Solution acquisition, valued at approximately $8 billion, could be bid out later this month, with an expected award issued by the second quarter of 2019. The contract will have a five-year base period with five one-year options. DEOS is the Pentagon's attempt to “unify and modernize” some of its legacy systems, including enterprise email, collaboration services, voice and video services, messaging, content management and other productivity capabilities for more than 3.5 million users. Brian Herman, the Defense Information Systems Agency's unified capabilities portfolio manager, said the Pentagon isn't interested in developing new capabilities but rather wants to take advantage of existing commercial capabilities in use across industry today. “Our goal is to take the capabilities that are available now, change the way we work to take advantage of these commercial services, and receive all of the upgrades and improvements that industry brings to their commercial customers,” said Herman, speaking at the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association's Defensive Cyber Operations Symposium in Baltimore May 16. In the commercial world, many companies have opted for cloud-based delivery of collaborative and email services. Delivered at scale across the Defense Department's massive enterprise, Herman said the approach could significantly reduce costs and improve security and efficiency. DEOS could eventually replace the Defense Enterprise Email, Defense Collaboration Services, and Defense Enterprise Portal Service, and potentially other legacy systems currently maintained by the Pentagon's IT wing. “We've had feedback from the DOD management, financial, and technical leaders. They've looked at the services used by [DOD agencies] and said, ‘You need to change the way you use these services. It's no longer necessary for every application to be on your desktop. Perhaps you can have web-based access to some of these capabilities and both improve the security and reduce the cost of these capabilities,” Herman said. DEOS will offer services through the Pentagon's unclassified and classified networks, meaning potential bidders must have provisional authorization to operate at Impact Level 5 to bid on it. Currently, only a few cloud service providers, including Microsoft, IBM, Amazon Web Services and General Dynamics, have achieved this status. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has not yet released a final solicitation for JEDI, which some industry estimates have pegged at $10 billion. The contract has drawn scrutiny from industry and Congress because of the Defense Department's decision to award it to a single cloud service provider. Initially expected to be released in mid-May for industry consideration, it has been delayed indefinitely. https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/06/pentagons-second-multibillion-cloud-contract-be-bid-coming-months/148733/

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  26 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  The F-35 Will Give Poland A More Advanced Air Force Than Some Major NATO Allies

  June 24, 2020 - This past January, the Polish government took the bold step to acquire thirty-two F-35A Joint Strike Fighters (JSF). Poland is becoming a major player in NATO. It is working to modernize its air, sea and land forces. It is also forging closer relations with the United States, hosting U.S. forces, allowing the prepositioning of military equipment, and working to improve interoperability. By making the decision to buy the F-35, Poland will leap ahead of a number of its European allies, most notably France and Germany, and enter the elite group of countries operating fifth- generation aircraft. The F-35 will not only be America's premier fifth generation fighter, but the world's. From its inception, the JSF was going to be an international fighter. The F-35 Consortium, consisting of the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia, Norway, Denmark, and until recently Turkey, contributed more than $4 billion towards the program's development costs. The aerospace industries in each of these countries also contributed critical technologies. Current estimates for international purchases are between 600 and 700 JSFs. If all the NATO members currently planning to acquire the JSF fulfill their commitments, the F-35 will constitute NATO's single biggest fighter fleet, ahead of the Franco-German-British Eurofighter. This will provide a major boost to air power interoperability for the Alliance. The move from the current fourth-generation platforms to fifth-generation is both inevitable and urgent. There is a general consensus that fourth-generation aircraft have decreasing survivability in the face of advanced, integrated air-defense networks. Efforts to sustain the ability of older aircraft to penetrate increasing lethal defenses will require larger force packages and the extensive use of scarce support assets, such as airborne jammers. Given that NATO air forces will also be fighting outnumbered, with their infrastructure under continuous attack from long-range-fire systems, this is a losing proposition. The F-35 will inevitably become the centerpiece of NATO's air capability. Fifth-generation aircraft with low-observable features, commonly referred to as “stealthiness,” and an array of advanced sensors are able not only to counter advanced air defenses, thereby restoring the West's erstwhile advantage in the air, but improve the performance and survivability of fourth-generation aerial platforms. Employing its sophisticated suite of sensors, the JSF can pass high-quality, near-real-time targeting information to fourth-generation platforms operating at a distance from high-threat air defenses. In addition, with its revolutionary array of sensors and computers, the F-35 can serve as both a penetrating ISR and stand-in electronic warfare platform. Read more from the National Interest. View source version on F-35.com: https://www.f35.com/news/detail/the-f-35-will-give-poland-a-more-advanced-air-force-than-some-major-nato-al

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  5 septembre 2023 | International, Terrestre

  Russian forces destroy first British-supplied Challenger 2 tank in Ukraine, official says | Reuters

  Russian forces fighting in southern Ukraine have destroyed a British-supplied Challenger 2 tank for the first time, a Russian-backed official said on Tuesday, releasing what he said was a video of its smouldering wreckage.