Feds should stand up for Canadian aerospace and defence industries with CMMA procurement

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  12 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  Italy signals slowdown on F-35 orders

  By: Tom Kington ROME — Italy will stretch out the order of F-35 fighter jets, buying six or seven of the aircraft in the next five years instead of the previously planned 10 jets, a government source told Defense News. The decision follows a review of the program by Italy's populist government, which took office in June and is mulling defense spending cuts to pay for social welfare programs and cover tax cuts. The source said the plan did not envisage a reduction in orders, merely a slowdown of intake, which would leave the decision of the total F-35 purchase to a future government. Previous governments planned to buy 60 F-35As and 30 F-35Bs for a total of 90 aircraft. The new government will focus on spending plans over its five-year mandate and not beyond, the source said, adding that discussions are underway with the U.S. about the change in schedule. The decision on the slowdown keeps with Italian policy on the F-35 set out by Defence Minister Elisabetta Trenta after she took office in June. “What I would like to do is lighten the load, since we have other spending commitments in Europe. We will try to stretch out deliveries instead of cutting the order, which would reduce offsets and mean penalties,” she told Defense News at the time. Italy has taken delivery of 10 F-35As and one F-35B. Two of the "A" models as well as the "B" model are being used for training in the U.S., while eight "A" models are now based at the Italian Air Force's base in Amendola, southern Italy. Trenta was tapped for office by the Five Star party, one of two political parties in Italy's current coalition government. Five Star politicians took a hostile line toward the F-35 program before taking office, at one point promising to scrap it. However, a defense spending document released last month suggests the government will maintain spending on the program in the next two years, with €766 million (U.S. $874 million) due to be spent in 2019 and €783 million in 2020. Those figures should be treated as provisional until the overall budget is signed in Parliament in the coming weeks. Five Star politicians have also shown hostility toward another U.S. defense program — the ground station planned in Sicily to support the Mobile User Objective System, or MUOS, network, a U.S. Navy-run satellite network providing voice and data communications to U.S. military personnel and platforms around the world, even when they are under thick forest canopies. Long held up by legal challenges in Sicily amid health fears, sources have said the MUOS antenna in Sicily could soon see final approval from the Italian government. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2018/11/09/italy-signals-slowdown-on-f-35-orders

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  12 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Sécurité

  Kirtland Air Force Base gets space defense upgrades

  By SCOTT TURNER (Tribune News Service) — The U.S. Air Force has begun construction on a facility at Kirtland Air Force Base that will play a major role in defending the nation from attacks by other countries on U.S. satellites. The Air Force Research Laboratory's 26,000 square-foot, $12.8 million Space Control Laboratory will consolidate efforts now being conducted in six different facilities on the base. "Space is now a war-fighting domain," said Air Force Col. Eric Felt, director of the Space Vehicles Directorate at the base. "That doesn't mean we want war in space. We certainly don't. It doesn't mean we have to have war in space. ... If our adversaries attempt to counter us in that domain, we need to have the capabilities and the tools for our nation to counter that." At a groundbreaking ceremony at the base on Thursday, Felt said the new facility will help in that effort. He said the building will be a major addition to AFRL's research in advancing in "space situational awareness, command and control of space systems and the survivability of space assets." "This is a space control technology building," he said. "Space control starts with space domain awareness, making sure we know everything that is going on in space. From there, it goes to making sure we can protect ourselves in space, protect our assets that are up in space. "All the basic components that we need to do for that part of the mission is going to be developed here. The next generation cutting edge capabilities that our nation needs are going to be developed here. And if we do need to perform offensive operations in space, we will be working on those components as well." Brian Engberg, the chief of the space control technologies branch of AFRL's Spacecraft Components Division said researchers in the facility would be determining what satellites were doing. He also said researchers would not only be addressing threats from other countries, but "threats from the space environment itself." Work at the facility will also include the development of satellite technology. "Every satellite that we have up there needs to be resilient," Felt said. "It needs to be there when we need it. If we happen to be in a conflict with a peer competitor, our satellites have to have the defense capabilities when we need them the most." The facility will include office and lab space for 65 civilian and military contractors. It will contain a 5,000 square-foot high-bay laboratory space and more than 5,000 square feet of secure office, laboratory and meeting space. Enberg said scientists and researchers had input on the design, "making sure that everything going into this building will be exactly what we need in order to accomplish our mission, and integrate our people and our ideas better in an innovative environment in order to support our war-fighter mission." "We're looking forward to having a sufficient amount of space in order to collaborate with our industrial partners and our partners in government," he said. "We have many, many projects we are working on. This facility will be a great step forward." AFRL principal technical adviser Michael Gallegos helped lead the effort to bring the facility to Kirtland, an effort he said began about two decades ago. "It's a new state of the art facility that will equip our workforce with secure labs, secure conference space and all of the required lab support space that it needs," he said. Construction of the facility is expected to be completed in December 2020. The contractor for the project is KL House Construction Co. "This was envisioned 20 years ago, back before anybody thought of space as a war-fighting domain, back when space control was just a side project," Felt said. "There were visionary folks who saw our nation was going to need this, that our labs were going to need this." https://www.stripes.com/news/us/kirtland-air-force-base-gets-space-defense-upgrades-1.585666

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  12 juin 2018 | International, Naval

  Lockheed, Austal USA serve up new batch of LCS amid frigate competition

  The littoral combat ship program continues to push ships to the fleet as the program begins to wind down ahead of the Navy's planned transition to a future frigate. In Marinette, Wisconsin, Lockheed and Fincantieri's latest mono-hull LCS, the Sioux City, completed acceptance trials in Lake Michigan, according to May 31 announcement. That ship is preparing to commission in Annapolis, Maryland, in the Fall after some weather and mechanical delays pushed back trials. The Sioux City is the sixth mono-hull LCS. Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, in May delivered its eighth trimaran LCS, the Tulsa, and the second LCS delivered by the yard this year. The first one, the Manchester, was commissioned May 26. Both yards are still churning on a backlog of LCS. The ships will be coming fast and furious over the next couple of years as Austal, Lockheed and Fincantieri all pursue strategies to secure the contract to build the Navy's future frigate, known as FFG(X). At Marinette, the yard has seven other ships in production as well as one in long-lead procurement. Austal is working on five other LCS and the last three expeditionary fast transport ships of the 12 ordered. Between the two shipyards, there are no fewer than three proposals for the FFG(X). Fincantieri is pushing hard to make FREMM the Navy's next frigate, which would likely be built at Marinette. You can read all about the FREMM below: Lockheed is also likely eyeing Marinette for its proposal for FFG(X), a variant of the Freedom mono-hull LCS, for which it is the prime contractor. Austal is likewise proposing a variant of its trimaran LCS and the stakes for that shipyard are especially high since it is coming to the end of both its programs. Lockheed and Fincantieri are anticipating an order of a Freedom LCS variant multi-mission surface combatant for Saudi Arabia's naval recapitalization. All three of the contractors are among five competing for the FFG(X) contract. Navantia and Huntington Ingalls are the other two. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/06/11/lockheed-austal-usa-serve-up-new-batch-of-lcs-amid-frigate-competition/