Exclusive: New Taiwan weapons package to be announced soon, US officials say

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  15 octobre 2019 | International, Terrestre

  Soldiers to get a say in light tank competition

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — Two companies are competing to build the Army's new light tank for Infantry Brigade Combat Teams and, in order to win, their prototypes will be judged by the users themselves. Those tests will be part of an extensive evaluation beginning roughly a year from now, Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, Army program executive officer for ground combat systems, told Defense News. BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems were chosen in December 2018 to build 12 prototypes each of the Army's future Mobile Protected Firepower vehicle identified in the Army's ground combat vehicle strategy, released in 2015, as much needed capability the service lacked. GDLS will build a vehicle that takes the United Kingdom's AJAX chassis and combines it with an Abrams turret. BAE Systems will bring an M8 Buford Armored Gun System with new capabilities and components. The MPF is going to be critical for the infantry, according to Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, who is in charge of combat vehicle modernization. “Looking in every war movie ever watched, the infantry has been pinned down and they have a machine gun nest or another enemy vehicle that's preventing them to get their objective,” Coffman said. “It takes an Audie Murphy-like character to go up and sneak around and take it out from the rear.” MPF is going to take care of those impediments to forward progression, he said, and is a “vital piece of equipment for our Army. Right now we are doing that with Humvees and Javelin.” The soldier vehicle assessment will take place at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Fort Stewart, Georgia, and will include live-fire tests and operating in IBCT formations, Cummings said. The assessment will not just cover how the vehicles perform operationally, but how they hold up when assessed against warfighting doctrine, organization, training, maintenance in the field, logistics and sustainment. “This will be different, even though we've done it in history,” Cummings said. A team will look at doctrine in terms of having a light tank in the formation as well as having mechanics, fuel and the ability to recover vehicles as part of the operational assessment. “It's important we learn that early on,” in the prototyping process rather than after choosing a winning vehicle, Cummings noted. The Army is now reviewing design maturity of the vehicles and is making sure that everything stays on track to meet the soldier vehicle assessment requirements. These prototypes have to be ready for prime time when they get into an operational environment toward the end of next year, according to Cummings. Cummings also has two groups working with each vendor that are firewalled from one another. Those groups will be working with vendors through the SVA and to eventual down-select to one vehicle around the second or third quarter of fiscal year 2022 to go into production. The prototypes are expected in the third quarter of fiscal 2021. The first units will get MPF by FY25. The Army plans build 26 vehicles initially with an option to build 28 more and retrofit eight prototypes. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2019/10/15/soldiers-to-get-a-say-in-light-tank-competition

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  18 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Difficultés de financement de la BITD : résultats du rapport de l’Assemblée nationale

  DÉFENSE Difficultés de financement de la BITD : résultats du rapport de l'Assemblée nationale À l'issue de quatre mois de travaux, les députés Françoise Ballet-Blu (LaREM, Vienne) et Jean-Louis Thiériot (LR, Seine-et-Marne), rapporteurs de la mission sur le financement de la base industrielle et technologique de défense (BITD), ont confirmé lors de la présentation du rapport qu'il existe bien une réticence des banques à financer les industries de la défense. Jean-Louis Thiériot accorde un entretien à La Tribune. « Le GICAT a raison à 80%. Il existe une vraie frilosité concernant le financement de l'exportation vers certains pays. Le GICAT a parfaitement raison de tirer la sonnette d'alarme », souligne-t-il.« Les auditions que nous avons menées ont confirmé deux tendances profondes qui rythment désormais la vie des entreprises de défense : les règles de « compliance », notamment la loi Sapin 2, renforcent considérablement les exigences imposées aux entreprises, et le risque réputationnel est devenu absolument majeur pour les banques », explique M. Thiériot, qui conclut : « pour sauver notre industrie d'armement, qui est indispensable à notre modèle de défense, basé à la fois sur une production nationale et à l'exportation, il faudra, d'une manière ou d'une autre, trouver une structure publique de financement de l'industrie de défense et de ses exportations ». Les députés proposent, par exemple, de créer un label industrie de souveraineté pour les PME/PMI, afin de leur permettre de mieux négocier leurs demandes de crédits. Ils proposent aussi qu'une mission d'accompagnement des PME à la conformité soit confiée à l'Agence française anticorruption et à Bpifrance. Ils plaident, de plus, pour déplafonner les seuils d'intervention de Bpifrance s'agissant des crédits export, en passant de 25 à 50 millions d'euros pour les financements en solitaire et de 75 à 100 millions pour les opérations en cofinancement. Enfin, ils demandent que la Banque européenne d'investissement (BEI) devienne un acteur du financement de la défense. Les Echos et La Tribune du 18 février

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  23 septembre 2020 | International, Terrestre, Autre défense

  After munition worker deaths, Army floats $16 billion plan to modernize production

  Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― U.S. Army officials told lawmakers Tuesday they are seeking a new 15-year, $16 billion strategy to modernize and automate the military's aging munitions plants following nearly a dozen worker deaths and injuries over recent years. In Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee testimony, Army officials suggested workers who handle dangerous materials could be replaced by robotics and computers as part of their ambitious plan. The testimony came as lawmakers are deliberating over a proposed reshaping of the Pentagon's explosives oversight body, as part of the 2021 defense policy bill. “We're essentially making the explosives in a manner very much like we did in World War I in some cases, World War II in others,” Assistant Secretary of the Army for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology Bruce Jette told lawmakers. “We literally have people standing under machines that are full of 1,500 pounds of molten explosives, drooling it into artillery shells to fill them up, and then they push the carts away. We don't have automation, we don't have robotics.” Lawmakers described the ammunition industrial base as fragile because of its dependence on foreign sources of materials and because its aging facilities need of safety upgrades. (Munitions production facilities are contractor operated, with some owned by the government.) Army officials largely agreed, saying they rely on 55 foreign suppliers for certain equipment and materials ― such as a TNT-replacement 2,4-Dinitroanisole, which comes from India ― because costs, environmental regulations and legal liabilities make many of them harder to develop in the United States. The Army even relies on a small volume of detonators and pyrotechnics from China, Jette said. The Army is studying how to wean itself from foreign suppliers. At the same time, Jette has not ruled out supplies from Canada, Mexico and elsewhere, if a surge is needed, adding that he personally visited a South Korean factory that once supplied the U.S. with bullets at .50 caliber and below. Calling safety a top priority, Army officials said human handling of the energetics, explosives and acids associated with munitions can be replaced with “process automation or other technology solutions, freeing the workforce to focus on technical oversight.” More than 80 percent of major mishaps at munitions facilities were caused by human error, they said. “Three deaths in the last ten years on our facilities, two of them were related to the manufacturing process: We don't need to have that happen anymore,” Jette said. “I do not want to be the ASAALT and get another phone call that there's another death on something I could have provided the improvement to.” Jette said the 2017 death of Lake City Army Ammunition Plant worker Lawrence Bass, 55, “should not have occurred,” and that Bass ― killed while handling an explosive component called tetrazine ― was performing his duties in accordance with procedures. “His death is in fact a catalyst in transforming our approach, as opposed to modernizing under current circumstances. He should never have been in that close proximity where that event could have happened,” Jette said. “Should it happen with a machine, I can buy another machine.” Still, modernizing in the way Army officials seek would require Congress appropriate roughly $1 billion per year for 15 years, which is more than twice what the Army has asked over the last three years. It's an open question whether Congress would be as inclined to support the munitions productions facilities, if they support fewer jobs. “The idea of making it safer for workers, there's no doubt about that, but because these plants have grown up since the '40′s," said Tactical Air and Land Forces Subcommittee Chairman Donald Norcross, D-N.J. "You eliminate many of those jobs, there's potential of that support also going.” Asked what more industry could do to shoulder the cost of modernizing facilities, Jette suggested it would be better if the government made the investments upfront as industry would only pass the costs on later. “This is the United States military's industrial base for munitions. We need to own that, not have anything beholden IP-wise or any other way to the defense industry or any other supplier," Jette said. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/09/22/after-munition-worker-deaths-army-floats-16-billion-plan-to-modernize-production/