Fincantieri buys Leonardo's submarine business in 415 mln euro deal

Sur le même sujet

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  22 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  Canadian aviation company manufacturing air sanitizers to fight COVID-19

  A Canadian company is developing air sanitizers to help in the fight against COVID-19.

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  22 juin 2018 | International, Naval

  Upgrading US Navy ships is difficult and expensive. Change is coming

  By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Navy is looking at extending the life of its surface ships by as much as 13 years, meaning some ships might be 53 years old when they leave the fleet. Here's the main problem: keeping their combat systems relevant. The Navy's front-line combatants ― cruisers and destroyers ― are incredibly expensive to upgrade, in part because one must cut open the ship and remove fixtures that were intended to be permanent when they were installed. When the Navy put Baseline 9 on the cruiser Normandy a few years ago, which included all new consoles, displays and computer servers in addition to the software, it ran the service $188 million. Now, the capability and function of the new Baseline 9 suite on Normandy is staggering. The cost of doing that to all the legacy cruisers and destroyers in the fleet would be equally staggering: it would cost billions. So why is that? Why are the most advanced ships on the planet so difficult to keep relevant? And if the pace of change is picking up, how can the Navy stay relevant in the future without breaking the national piggy bank? Capt. Mark Vandroff, the current commanding officer of the Carderock Division of the Naval Surface Warfare Center and former Arleigh Burke-class destroyer program manager, understands this issue better than most. At this week's American Society of Naval Engineers symposium, Vandroff described why its so darn hard to upgrade the old ships and how future designs will do better. Here's what Vandroff had to say: “Flexibility is a requirement that historically we haven't valued, and we haven't valued it for very good reasons: It wasn't important. “When you think of a ship that was designed in the ‘70s and built in the ‘80s, we didn't realize how fast and how much technology was going to change. We could have said: ‘You know what? I'm going to have everything bolted.' Bolt down the consoles in [the combat information center], bolt in the [vertical launch system] launchers ― all of it bolted so that we could more easily pop out and remove and switch out. “The problem was we didn't value that back then. We were told to value survivability and density because we were trying to pack maximum capability into the space that we have. That's why you have what you have with the DDG-51 today. And they are hard to modernize because we valued survivability and packing the maximum capability into the minimum space. And we achieved that because that was the requirement at the time. “I would argue that now as we look at requirements for future ships, flexibility is a priority. You are going to have to balance it. What if I have to bolt stuff down? Well, either we are going to give up some of my survivability standards or I'm going to take up more space to have the equivalent standards with an different kind of mounting system, for example. And that is going to generate a new set of requirements ― it's going to drive design in different directions than it went before. “I suppose you could accuse the ship designers in the 1980s of failure to foresee the future, but that's all of us. And the point is they did what they were told to do. Flexibility is what we want now, and I think you will see it drive design from this point forward because it is now something we are forced to value.” https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/06/21/upgrading-us-navy-ships-is-difficult-and-expensive-change-is-coming/

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  18 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

  Air Force looks for help on new, hard-to-jam, satellite waveform

  By: Adam Stone In the face of a rising near-peer threat to electronic communications, the Air Force is pressing forward with efforts to develop a new, more resilient, harder-to-jam waveform that soldiers could use on the battlefield. The service expects to receive responses from industry soon on a recent request for information around protected satellite communications. The request sought industry guidance on how best to implement a new, more resilient protected tactical waveform (PTW), which enables anti-jamming capabilities within protected tactical SATCOM. “The Air Force is looking to protect our warfighter's satellite communications against adversarial electronic jamming,” the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) said in a written statement to C4ISRNet. The threat comes from “adversarial electronic jammers that are intended to disrupt and interfere with U.S. satellite communications,” leaders at SMC said. Protected tactical SATCOM is envisioned to provide worldwide, anti-jam communications to tactical warfighters in benign and contested environments. The quest to solidify satellite communication links has taken on increasing urgency in recent years. As satellite communications has emerged as an integral component in the military's command and control infrastructure, potential adversaries have stepped up their ability to disrupt such links. “Tactical satellite communications are vital to worldwide military operations,” the agency noted. “Our adversaries know this and desire to disrupt U.S. satellite communications. The Air Force is fielding Protected Tactical SATCOM capabilities to ... ensure warfighters around the globe have access to secure and reliable communications.” Industry is expected to play a key role in the development and deployment of any new waveform. Officials at SMC said that early prototyping efforts will be conducted through the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC), which is managed by Advanced Technology International. SpEC acts as a vehicle to facilitate federally-funded space-related prototype projects with an eye toward increasing flexibility, decreasing cost and shortening the development lifecycle. The organization claims 16 prototype awards to date, with some $26 million in funding awarded. Understanding the protected tactical waveform Government documents describe PTW as the centerpiece of the broader protected tactical SATCOM effort, noting that it provides “cost-effective, protected communications over both military and commercial satellites in multiple frequency bands as well as broader protection, more resiliency, more throughput and more efficient utilization of satellite bandwidth.” A flight test last year at Hansom Air Force Base suggested the emerging tool may soon be ready to deliver on such promises. While SMC leads the PTW effort, Hanscom is working in collaboration with MIT Lincoln Laboratory and the MITRE Corp. to conduct ground and airborne terminal work. Researchers from MIT's Lincoln Laboratory flew a Boeing 707 test aircraft for two and a half hours in order to use the waveform in flight. With a commercial satellite, officials gathered data on the PTW's ability to operate under realistic flight conditions. “We know this capability is something that would help our warfighters tremendously, as it will not only provide anti-jam communications, but also a low probability of detection and intercept,” Bill Lyons, Advanced Development program manager and PTW lead at Hanscom, said in an Air Force news release. The test scenario called for the waveform to perform in an aircraft-mounted terminal. Evaluators were looking to see whether its systems and algorithms would function as expected in a highly mobile environment. “Everything worked and we got the objectives accomplished successfully,” Ken Hetling, Advanced Satcom Systems and Operations associate group leader at Lincoln Laboratory, said in an Air Force press release. “The waveform worked.” Asking for industry input should help the service to chart its next steps in the development of more protections. While the request does not specify when or how the Air Force intends to move forward, it is clearly a matter not of whetherthe military will go down this road, but rather when and how. https://www.c4isrnet.com/c2-comms/satellites/2018/10/05/air-force-looks-for-help-on-new-hard-to-jam-satellite-waveform/