16 mars 2020 | International, Naval
By: Tom Kington
As Italy's coronavirus crisis worsens, state shipbuilder Fincantieri has suspended operations for two weeks at its Italian facilities.
The announcement on Friday came as Italian authorities reported Italy's death toll from the virus had reached 1,266, while the total number of cases reached 17,660. This week, the Italian government placed the entire country under lockdown, restricting travel unless for work reasons and shutting down most shops as it attempts to slow the spread of the virus.
Fincantieri said that following a request from unions, it would suspend production in Italy from March 16 to March 29.
Fincantieri tried to reduce its exposure to the virus through teleworking and halting of business travel by staff.
Italy's other major defense company, Leonardo, said this week it could not rule out the “temporary, partial and targeted suspension of operations of certain departments within production sites.”
The firm also said marketing campaigns, supply chains, production and delivery times would likely be affected by the crisis. Leonardo expects to give an up update on impact of the virus on its financial performance soon. It reported revenue of 13.8 billion euros in 2019, up 12.6 percent year over year, thanks to healthy performance by its defense electronics and security and aeronautics divisions.
7 septembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Spirit AeroSystems' growth landed it back on the Defense News Top 100 list this year — and the company has more ambitious plans in store.
28 juillet 2020 | International, Naval
By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON – U.S. Navy brass is telling sailors and contractors to put fire safety at the center of their work in the shipyards and on the waterfront in the wake of a catastrophic fire aboard the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard. As Naval Sea Systems Command continues its formal assessment of the damage to Bonhomme Richard, the Navy has both sailors across the organization and contractors working on the ships reviewing their procedures and ensuring they are doing everything possible to prevent a second tragedy. Adm. Michael Gilday, the chief of naval operations, said the enterprise-wide effort was to prevent a similar event from taking place, a lesson he drew from the Navy's response to a string of accidents in 7th Fleet in 2017. “Could there be another Bonhomme Richard waiting to happen? If you go back to 2017, who would have predicted we'd have had two collisions of that magnitude within a month?” Gilday said in a July 16 interview with Defense News. “So, I'm not waiting for ‘No. 2' to decide we have a trend here. In a situation like this, one incident is enough for me to determine that there could be a trend and I'm not going to leave it to chance that there might be.” In the wake of the fire, he ordered fleet commanders to send a lengthy list of requirements to the waterfront, including a mandate to do fire safety inspections of every space on every ship. So-called “zone inspections” of each space on a ship are generally spread out over months, rather than packed into a week. The orders also included reviewing maintenance records on all damage control equipment – such as fire hoses and fire main connections, fire extinguishers, fixed fire suppression systems and firefighting gear – and ensure it is 100 percent accounted for. Additionally, each in-port duty section (a rotating group of sailors from the crew designated to stay on board the ship for 24 hours) was required to undergo a formal assessment as to their proficiency in firefighting and validate that they were properly manned to be effective. Contractors and shipbuilders have also been warned by the Navy to take fire safety seriously. In the days following the Bonhomme Richard fire, two minor fires – one on board the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge at General Dynamics NASSCO shipyard and another on the Navy's future carrier John F. Kennedy at Newport News shipbuilding – have curtailed work and prompted a doubling down on safety. In a Friday letter, Navy's top acquisitions official James Geurts told shipbuilders and contractors to take Bohnomme Richard as a lesson. "Anyone who steps aboard our ships must be ever vigilant about ensuring fire safety," Geurts wrote. "I urge you to use [the recent fire] to ensure that our work spaces are clean, that unnecessary clutter is removed, that all fire safety measures are being followed and that there is unrestricted access to firefighting and damage control equipment." ‘Gutted' The safety crackdown follows the Navy's worst in-port disaster since the 2012 fire on board the attack submarine Miami, which suffered a major conflagration while in deep maintenance at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Maine. That incident was later determined to be arson. The Bonhomme Richard fire, which experts fear may have damaged the “big deck” amphib beyond repair, raised troubling questions about how prepared sailors are to combat one of their most fearsome enemies: a shipboard fire, a threat they are trained to deal with from their earliest days in Boot Camp. In a letter this week from Gilday to all Navy flag officers and top enlisted leaders, he detailed how a series of explosions and a 1,200-degree inferno caused “extensive damage” to 11 of Bonhomme Richard's 14 decks. “There is fire and water damage, to varying degrees, on 11 of 14 decks,” Gilday wrote. “With the flight deck as a reference, I walked sections of the ship 5 levels below and had the opportunity to examine the superstructure. “The island is nearly gutted, as are sections of some of the decks below; some perhaps, nearly encompassing the 844 ft length and 106 ft beam of the ship ([Naval Sea System Command's] detailed assessment is ongoing). Sections of the flight deck are warped/bulging.” The fire on the Bonhomme Richard broke out the morning of July 12 while it was pierside in San Diego, California, undergoing maintenance. The blaze was aided by wind and explosions, Gilday wrote. “While response from the crew and federal firefighters was rapid, preliminary reports indicate there were two main factors that contributed to the intensity, scope, and speed of the fire,” Gilday wrote. “First was wind that fueled the fire as the vehicle storage area leads to the well deck, which opens to the air at the stern gate. The second were the explosions, one in particular, reportedly heard about 13 miles away. “The explosions, some were intense, and the uncertainty of their location and timing, led to a situation, that might have been under control late Sunday night, but expanded into a mass conflagration, spreading quickly up elevator shafts, engine exhaust stacks, and through berthing and other compartments where combustible material was present.” The Navy has launched dual investigations into the fire: A safety investigation, which are generally not released to the public so that witnesses can feel free to speak openly, and a more formal administrative investigation, which generally comes with disciplinary recommendations and are releasable to the public. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/07/25/after-the-us-navys-bonhomme-richard-catastrophe-a-far-reaching-crackdown-on-fire-safety/
19 juin 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Autre défense
By: Seth J. Frantzman and Kelsey D. Atherton Rafael Advanced Defense System's Spice bombs now have a new technological breakthrough as the Israeli company enables its Spice 250 with artificial intelligence alongside automatic target recognition to be used with scene-matching technology. The Spice 250, which can be deployed on quad racks under the wings of warplanes like the F-16, has a 75-kilogram warhead and a maximum range of 100 kilometers with its deployable wings. Its electro-optic scene-matching technology — which involves uploading terrain data onto the bomb and combining it with real-time electro-optic imagery — allows the weapon to work in GPS-denied environments. And the bomb can use this autonomous capability to navigate and correct its location, according to Gideon Weiss, Rafael's deputy general manager of marketing and business development at the company's air and C4I division. With its AI and “deep learning” technologies, the weapon has the ability to identity moving ground targets and distinguish them from other objects and terrain. This is based on 3D models uploaded to the bomb as well as algorithms. As the weapon identifies and homes in on its target, such as a convoy of vehicles, it separates the convoy of interest from other vehicles it has “learned” to ignore. “The deep-learning algorithm is indifferent to the actual data fed to it for modeling targets of interest and embedding their pertaining characteristics into the system," Weiss said. "However, the more the data used for modeling is representative of the target of interest, the more robust the recognition probability will be in real life.” Rafael has completed the development and testing phase of the Spice 250, including flight tests, which have “proven the robustness of the ATA and ATR, so it is mature for delivery,” Weiss said, using acronyms for automatic target acquisition and recognition. Asked if the ATR algorithm will select a secondary target if the computer cannot find the initial human-selected target, Weiss said: “This goes into the area of user-defined policies and rules of engagement, and it is up to the users to decide on how to apply the weapon, when and where to use it, and how to define target recognition probabilities and its eventuality.” Automatically selecting a secondary target may eventually become part of the upgrade profile for the munition, if customers express significant interest in the feature. With a two-way data link and a video-streaming capability, the bomb can be aborted or told to re-target up until a “few second before the weapon hits its target,” Weiss explained. That two-way data-link, enabled by the weapon's mounting on a Smart Quad Rack, or SQR, will enable future deep learning to be based on data extracted from earlier launches. Data recorded will include either live-streaming video or a burst of still images of the entire homing phase up until impact. “These are automatically and simultaneously recorded on the SQR — enabling two functions: (a) real-time and post-mission BDI (Bomb Damage Indication); (b) post-mission target data extraction for intel updates, etc.," Weiss said. "The ATR capability, including its deep learning updates, must be more agile than the enemy's ability to conceal and/or change its battlefield footprint, tactics, appearance or anything else which might impede the ATR from accurately recognizing and destroying targets.” The Spice family of weapons is operational with the Israeli Air Force and international customers. https://www.defensenews.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/06/17/israels-rafael-integrates-artificial-intelligence-into-spice-bombs/