13 décembre 2023 | International, Terrestre, Sécurité
The Pentagon has also paused negotiations on a performance-based logistics contract for the F-35 after cost and performance estimates underwhelmed.
30 septembre 2024 | International, Aérospatial
The Pentagon aims to maximize industry's ability to produce vital weapons like the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile and Long Range Anti-Ship Missile.
12 juillet 2018 | International, Naval
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. ARLINGTON: The Navy has crammed as much electronics as it can into its new DDG-51 Flight III destroyers now beginning construction, Rear Adm. William Galinis said this morning. That drives the service towards a new Large Surface Combatant that can comfortably accommodate the same high-powered radars, as well as future weapons such as lasers, on either a modified DDG-51 hull or an entirely new design. “It's going to be more of an evolutionary approach as we migrate from the DDG-51 Flight IIIs to the Large Surface Combatant,” said Galinis, the Navy's Program Executive Officer for Ships. (LSC evolved from the Future Surface Combatant concept and will serve along a new frigate and unmanned surface vessels). “(We) start with a DDG-51 flight III combat system and we build off of that, probably bringing in a new HME (Hull, Mechanical, & Engineering) infrastructure, a new power architecture, to support that system as it then evolves going forward.” “Before the end of the year, we'll start reaching out to industry to start sharing some of the thoughts we have and where we think we're going,” Galinis told a Navy League breakfast audience. “We'll bring industry into this at the right point, but we're still kind of working a lot of the technology pieces and what the requirements are right now.” Evolution, Not Revolution This evolutionary approach is similar to how the current Aegis combat system entered service on the CG-47 Ticonderoga cruisers in 1983 but came into its own on the DDG-51 Arleigh Burke destroyers. (Despite the difference in names, the two classes are virtually the same size). The DDG-51 is now the single most common type in the fleet, a vital part of the hoped-for 355-ship Navy, with some ships expected to serve into the 2070s: There are now 64 Arleigh Burkes of various sub-types in service; nine of the latest Flight IIA variant are in various stages of construction; and work is beginning on the new Flight IIIs in Mississippi (Huntington Ingalls Industries) and Maine (General Dynamics-owned Bath Iron Works). The Navy is doubling down on long-standing programs to keep its older warships up to date and on par with the newest versions. But the current destroyers just won't be able to keep up with the Flight III, which will have a slightly modified hull and higher-voltage electricity to accommodate Raytheon's massive new Air & Missile Defense Radar. A stripped down version of the AMDR, the Enterprise Air Search Radar (EASR, also by Raytheon) is already going on amphibious ships and might just fit on older Burkes as well, however. But it's tight. On the Flight III, even with the hull modifications, “you kind of get to the naval architectural limits of the DDG-51 hullform,” Galinis told a Navy League breakfast this morning. “That's going to bring a lot of incredible capabilities to the fleet but there's also a fair amount of technical risk.” The Navy is laboring mightily to reduce that risk on Flight III with simulations and land-based testing, including a full prototype of the new power plant being built in Philadelphia. But it's clear the combat system is out of room to grow within the limits of the current hull. So how different does the next ship need to be? “How much more combat capability can we squeeze into the current hullform?” Galinis said. “Do we use the DDG-51 hullform and maybe expand that? Do we build a new hullform?” “We're looking at all the options, Sydney,” he said when reporters clustered around him after his talk. “(It's in) very, very early stages... to say it'll be one system over another or one power architecture over another, it's way too early.” “We're still working through what that power architecture looks like,” Galinis told the breakfast. “Do we stay with a more traditional (gas-driven) system... or do we really make that transition to an integrated electric plant — and at some point, probably, bring in energy storage magazines...to support directed energy weapons and things like that?” The admiral's referring here to anti-missile lasers, railguns, and other high-tech but electricity-hungry systems. Having field-tested a rather jury-rigged 30 kilowatt laseron the converted amphibious ship Ponce, the Navy's next step is a more permanent, properly integrated installation next year on an amphibious ship, LPD-27 Portland. (Subsequent LPDs won't have the laser under current plans). But Portland is part of the relatively roomy LPD-17 San Antonio class, which has plenty of space, weight capacity, power, and cooling capacity (SWAP-C) available, in large part because the Navy never installed a planned 16 Vertical Launch System (VLS) tubes in the bow. By contrast, while the Navy's studying how to fit a laser on the Arleigh Burkes, the space and electricity available are much tighter. The DDG-1000 Digression The larger DDG-1000 Zumwalt class does have integrated electric drive that's performing well in sea trials, Galinis said. (That said, the brand-new DDG-1001, Michael Monsoor, has had glitches with the harmonic filter that manages the power and, more recently, with its turbine engine blades). “We've learned a lot from DDG-1000” that the Navy's now applying both to its highest priority program, the Columbia-class nuclear missile submarine, and potentially to the future Large Surface Combatant as well. In other ways, DDG-1000 is a dead end, too large and expensive for the Navy to afford in quantity. The Navy truncated the class to just three ships and restarted Arleigh Burke production, which it had halted on the assumption the Zumwalts would be built in bulk. Today, the Zumwalt‘s very mission is in doubt. The ship was designed around a 155 mm gun with revolutionary rocket-boosted shells, but ammunition technology hasn't reached the ranges the Navy wanted for the original mission of bombarding targets ashore. With the resurgence of the Russian fleet and the rise of China's, the Navy now wants to turn the DDG-1000s into ship-killers, which requires even longer ranges because modern naval battle is a duel of missiles. The gun's place in ship-to-ship combat is “probably not a significant role, at least not at the ranges we're interested in,” Galinis told reporters. While the Navy could invest in long-range cannon ammunition, he said, it's paused work on several potential shells it test-fired last summer, awaiting the final mission review. If the Zumwalts do move to the anti-ship mission, which Galinis said they would be well suited for with minor modifications, their guns will be less relevant than their 80 Advanced VLS missile tubes or future weapons such as railguns drawing on their prodigious electric power. That power plant might evolve into the electric heart of the future Large Surface Combatant — or it might not. “We're going to have the requirements discussion with Navy leadership and then we're going to want to engage industry as we start thinking about what options might be available,” Galinis said. “Frankly industry's probably best suited to try to help us with the technology piece, especially if we start thinking (that) we want an innovative electric plant.....We'd go to probably the big power electronics/power system vendors, who really work in that field and have the best information on where technology's going.” https://breakingdefense.com/2018/07/destroyers-maxed-out-navy-looks-to-new-hulls-power-for-radars-lasers/
22 juillet 2019 | International, Aérospatial
PAR JEAN-PAUL BAQUIAST Le temps n'est pas éloigné où les médias français ridiculisaient le Rafale de Dassault Aviation. Ils le présentaient comme une relique invendable et bientôt dépassée d'un temps où la France, dans la tradition gaulliste, voulait avoir des moyens de défense en propre au lieu de tout acheter aux Etats-Unis. Aujourd'hui le Rafale a finalement fait sa percée à l'exportation avec plus de 144 appareils commandées, dont 96 fermes. Mais il faut aussi prévoir l'avenir. Le 14 janvier, sur la chaîne de montage du Rafale à Mérignac, Florence Parly ministre de la défense a annoncé que le gouvernement voulait lancer les recherches pour une nouvelle version du Rafale, dit au standard F4, pour laquelle un budget de 2 milliards, malgré les restricitons, a déjà été prévu. Par ailleurs les armées françaises comptent augmenter leurs acquisitions à partir de 2022 portant si possible sur cette nouvelle génération du Rafale, livrables entre 2022 et 2030. Rappelons que le Rafale est le produit d'un ensemble d'industriels comprenant outre Dassault Aviation, Thales, Safran, MBDA-Missile Systems et des dizaines de sous-traitants. Inutile de préciser que chacun d'eux compte réutiliser dans le cadre d'autres produits militaires et civils le savoir-faire acquis. Le Rafale augmentera ainsi sa supériorité sur ses concurrents européens, Eurofighter et Gripen. Inutile de préciser aussi que dans le même temps les déboires du programme américain F-35 , qui tourne au scandale politique majeur, élimineront la concurrence de ce dernier. Les gouvernements européens qui avaient par complaisance servile avec les Etats-Unis, accepté de s'en équiper, devront vraisemblablement se rabattre sur le Rafale F4. Ils n'y perdront rien. Quant aux Su-35 et Su-57 russes, en dehors du marché indien où ils tentent de reprendre l'avantage sur le Rafale, ils ne sont en compétition avec lui quasiment nulle part, ce d'autant plus que le Rafale a déjà fait ses preuves dans divers engagements militaires en vraie grandeur, ce qui n'est pas autant que nous sachions le cas pour les russes. Les innovations du F4 concerneront principalement sa capacité à opérer en fusion de données au sein d'un dispositif interarmes et interarmées. Il sera en mesure, gr'ce à des logiciels opérant par radio, de recueillir et d'échanger des informations en temps réel avec l'ensemble des systèmes d'armes, aériens, terrestres, navals, spatiaux, qui seront engagés sur une zone de guerre. Ainsi navires, troupes au sol, satellites, plateformes aériennes pilotées et non pilotées (UCAV) qui opéreront à ses côtés, pourront bénéficier des échanges avec eux, soit pour être informés de la situation sur le terrain, soit en effectuant certaines missions pour leur compte. Le F4 sera doté d'un radar amélioré par rapport à l'actuel, dit AESA RBE2, qui pourra être plus précis pour des missions air-sol, plus puissant sur le mode air-air. Par ailleurs les spécialistes ont noté qu'il verra son système d'autoprotection SPECTRA ou Système de Protection et d'Évitement des Conduites de Tir et ses capacités de brouillage améliorées. Son optronique secteur frontal (OSF) sera doté d'infrarouge. Ceci améliorera les performances nocturnes de l'appareil jusqu'ici réduit à un capteur TV pour l'identification et la poursuite des objectifs aériens. Ajoutons que Thales apportera sur le F4 ses savoir-faire en matière de gestion des données en temps réel (Big Data) et d'intelligence artificielle (IA) pour offrir au F4 des outils de maintenance prédictive qui devraient permettre non seulement de réduire significativement le coût du maintien en condition opérationnelle mais aussi de rehausser le taux d'appareils immédiatement disponibles, qui ne dépasse pas actuellement du fait des nécessités de la maintenance environ 60%. On peut penser que le F4 sera est une nouvelle étape vers un Rafale F5, ou MLU (Mid-Life Upgrade), qui verra la pérennité de la filière pilotée assurée au-delà de l'horizon 2050, malgré les prédictions hasardeuses selon lesquelles les appareils pourront se passer de pilotes à bord. Enfin le Rafale F4 pourra emporter le missile AS4NG (air-sol nucléaire de quatrième génération), missile hypersonique capable de voler à plus de 5.000 km/h et devant entrer en service à l'horizon 2035. Il pourra ansi rivaliser avec les missiles hypersoniques dont seront seuls dotés la Russie, la Chine et sans doute les Etats-Unis, lesquels s'efforcent actuellement de rattraper leur retard en ce domaine. Il faut espérer que les futurs gouvernement français ne remettront pas en cause ces programmes, dans le désir de mieux financer la consommation ou de se conformer à des instructions de l'Otan. https://blogs.mediapart.fr/jean-paul-baquiast/blog/190719/defense-le-rafale-f4