From shelters to vehicles to rucks, here’s how the Army is changing its command posts

Sur le même sujet

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  19 juin 2020 | International, Naval

  £26.7 million engine support contract for Oxfordshire company

  June 17, 2020 - Oxfordshire-based EP Barrus secured the seven-year contract for the upkeep, update and supply of engines fitted to more than 1,100 craft. The contract covers boats within the current MOD in-service fleet for craft under 25m, including Rigid Inflatable Boats (RIBs), the Mexeflote landing-raft system powered by the Thrustmaster propulsion unit, workboats, and planned future craft. Defence Minister Jeremy Quin said: Our maritime industry continues to grow from strength to strength. This contract will secure an essential capability for our Armed Forces and support over 40 quality engineering jobs in Bicester plus many more throughout the UK. The contract will support operations in the UK and overseas involving the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, British Army, Ministry of Defence Police, and Cadets. The contract will directly support 40 jobs within Barrus's Engineering Centre, as well as a further 80 jobs across the UK supply chain that will benefit from the contract. In addition, this contract secures EP Barrus's graduate programme in Oxfordshire and the future roles for its young engineering students. James Melia, Project Manager for DE&S Boats Team, said: Boats are an essential capability of the UK Armed Forces and are used for many different operations around the world ensuring that our Navy has the reach it needs to protect our interests around the globe. We are committed to ensuring that engines are effectively managed through every stage of their life cycle and our partnership with EP Barrus will provide critical support to this. DE&S is proud to maintain excellent working relationships with EP Barrus, a valued industry supplier and we look forward to continuing to work together to support our front line with the equipment they need while also maintaining vital British skills and jobs. Photo Crown copyright View source version on UK Ministry of Defence: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/267-million-engine-support-contract-for-oxfordshire-company

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  14 août 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

  For IT companies, the secret to success in defense is all about big growth

  By: Jill Aitoro WASHINGTON — The secret to tackling the defense information technology market may be scale. Looking specifically at the pure-play IT companies that landed on the 2018 Defense News Top 100 list, many of those that have doubled down in some capacity saw defense revenue increase during fiscal 2017. That came on the tail end of another trend among the largest defense primes, to get out of the IT business. “The evolution started a couple years ago, where the large defense primes who had boned up on IT service work during the war [on terror] started to realize that for a variety of reasons they might not be able to compete as effectively, or extract the returns they want out of a business like that,” said Jon Raviv, senior analyst and vice president for aerospace and defense at Citi Research. Divestitures followed, and pure-play IT companies were able to quickly scale up not just in size and their ability to support massive contracts, but also in capability set. The acquisition of Lockheed Martin's IT business transformed Leidos from a $5 billion company to a $10 billion company. That deal closed in late 2016, explaining how the company saw double-digit growth in defense revenue in both 2016 and 2017 — despite the buy actually making the company less defense heavy overall. Similarly, CACI closed on the acquisition of L3 Technology's National Security Solutions for $550 million in February 2016 — three months before the end of its fiscal year. The associated revenue contributed to the 16 percent increase in defense revenue during 2017. Leidos CEO Roger Krone, in an interview with Defense News in 2016 soon after the acquisition closed, pointed to “scale, but not scale for scale's sake” as a big factor in the buy — noting, too, the importance of balancing the portfolio and geographic distribution. He also pointed to sheer numbers — 15,000 employees specifically — many with security clearances. The trend does seem to be continuing. CSRA chose to not participate in the 2018 Top 100 because its $9.7 billion acquisition by General Dynamics closed by the time data collection for the list kicked off. While General Dynamics is a top defense prime, its IT business functions as a largely separate entity, similar to the pure-play IT companies. The acquisition of CSRA, which reported $2.25 billion in defense revenue for fiscal 2016 — will add significant scale to GDIT. It is also likely to influence the company's Top 100 rank next year. The future promises more cyber and IT-related merger and acquisition activity in the vein of that deal, according to Daniel Gouré, a vice president with the Lexington Institute think tank. “Raytheon is still in acquisition mode with cyber, so it's an area that's still kind of churning,” he said. “I wouldn't be surprised to see some of these big players acquire some of the more defense-oriented cyber players.” Unclear is what the sweet spot may be for those exclusively IT-focused firms. “Where we sit right now, it's not clear what the right size is,” Raviv said. “GDIT and Leidos are about $10 billion in sales; SAIC and CACI and ManTech are lower tier. All of those companies say they are happy with scale but could do a deal. Whether they call it scale, or marrying capability sets — it's all marketing, I suppose.” And there are other tactics that achieve scale without acquisition. Perspecta emerged on the 2018 Top 100, having launched June 1, 2018 through the combination of DXC Technology's U.S. public sector business, Vencore, and KeyPoint Government Solutions. As one entity, Perspecta reported $2.73 billion in defense revenue and ranked 37. To put that in perspective, Vencore ranked 67 in last year's list, with $886.59 million in defense revenue. And all of these pure-play companies are increasingly marketing themselves as conduits to the “nontraditional players” that the Pentagon is so keen to attract. Amazon Web Services, for example, will often partner with government IT companies on defense contracts to hand off some of the contracting morass. That said, for all the potential, the bulk of the defense IT market is notoriously fickle. Services often set aside IT projects in an effort to preserve platform buys, and margins can be low. Agencies also struggle to balance upkeep of existing systems versus modernization efforts versus research and development into the next great technological marvel. But as Raviv noted, it's all IT. “Yes, there are companies working on high-end cyber, the ability to launch attacks through cyberspace or to harden the communication node on a new missile so it can't be hacked by, say, China. And while the word cyber came up a lot three or four years ago, now you hear a lot about AI, autonomy and machine learning. But it's all technology. And it's a lot of smart people working on a lot of advanced things many of us don't understand.” https://www.defensenews.com/top-100/2018/08/09/for-it-companies-the-secret-to-success-in-defense-is-all-about-big-growth/

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  19 février 2019 | International, C4ISR

  FLIR set to add Endeavor Robotics to its unmanned future

  By: Kelsey D. Atherton A camera is never just a camera anymore. For FLIR — the company whose bread and butter may be lenses and images but whose product is best thought of as an intelligence add-on more than any pedestrian photography — was never just about the camera. FLIR's cameras and sensors have been incorporated into vehicles for decades, a platform on platforms. But in the past two years, FLIR has moved to acquire robotics companies of its own. A new deal, announced Feb. 11, 2019, is set to have FLIR acquire Endeavor Robotics. In November 2016, FLIR acquired Prox Dynamics, maker of the sparrow-sized Black Hornet micro-drone. It was FLIR's first foray into its own unmanned vehicles. In January 2019, FLIR acquired drone-maker Aeryon Labs, which produces vehicles that weigh less than 20 pounds for a number of militaries across the globe. “Now with Endeavor, we've started down that path of executing our inorganic phase of our growth strategy for unmanned,” said David Ray, president of the Government and Defense Business Unit at FLIR. “What that does is it allows us to have a platform to move the customer's vision forward for this whole notion of manned-unmanned teaming. It's driving an open architecture, an environment where you can have both manned vehicles and unmanned really cooperating and delivering missions like never before.” Endeavor Robotics is the largest get by FLIR of the lot. FLIR is set to buy Endeavor for $385 million — almost twice as much as FLIR paid for Aeryon Labs, and nearly three times as much as it spent on Prox Dynamics. With Endeavor Robotics comes a whole host of tracked unmanned ground vehicles, including the infantry-deployable (and -tossable) FirstLook, and the larger and heavier PackBot and Kobra. These robots can incorporate a variety of sensors from FLIR, for everything from video and infrared to chemical detection. Being in-house means FLIR can experiment and explore more fusion of its various platforms. “With our Black Hornet we can have a reconnaissance system that is connected to a vehicle,” Ray said, “a tank or whatever it may be, where you could actually launch Black Hornet aircraft from another vehicle. As we enhance our sensors across both, we're able to bring that power to bear in terms of layered surveillance.” While FLIR is still relatively new to robotics, it's used to working across sectors. FLIR sensors have been used by the military, government, law enforcement and in the security space, and have had to stay competitive with commercial companies. Lessons learned from an application in nuclear reactor security might be applicable to a sensor on an explosive ordnance disposal robot. Those updates and lessons have stayed fixed to the specific sensor. With the new robotics companies acquired by FLIR, it can adapt its vehicles and sensors in a more holistic way. “Our latest Black Hornet III is able to operate in GPS-denied environments,” Ray said. “And so the beauty of Endeavor being part FLIR is we can go look at how we take an investment and enhancements we've made and see what it takes to go transfer that into a vehicle. The ultimate goal is being able to build world-class R&D and generate world-class capability, and then be able to expand that across multiple platforms.” FLIR's past, present and future remain very much about the core business of providing sensors for others to incorporate. Also in that future we can anticipate FLIR adapting and designing its own vehicles around its sensors. That means looking at the way the data collected by those sensors can be turned into everything from useful navigational information for an autonomous system on the vehicle, to vital information relayed by tablet to soldiers commanding the robot nearby. https://www.c4isrnet.com/unmanned/2019/02/15/flir-set-to-add-endeavor-robotics-to-its-unmanned-future