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  16 septembre 2020 | International, Naval

  Austal Expanding Yard In Alabama as It Eyes New Unmanned, Amphibious Shipbuilding Programs

  Megan Eckstein Austal USA is expanding the capacity and capability of its Alabama shipyard, doubling down on investing in its future in a way reminiscent of 2009, just before it won the block buy of Littoral Combat Ships that secured the yard a spot in the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base. The Mobile yard this month closed on the purchase of a ship repair facility formerly owned by World Marine of Alabama, an indirect subsidiary of Modern American Recycling and Repair Services of Alabama. It includes a 20,000-ton Panamax-class floating dry dock, 100,000 square feet of covered repair facilities and 15 acres of waterfront property along the Mobile River and Gulf of Mexico, according to a company statement. Shipyard President Craig Perciavalle told USNI News this week that the expansion fits in with its desires to continue building aluminum ships and to expand into building steel ships – manned or unmanned – as well as a desire to take on more repair work for the Navy and other customers. “We feel we're putting ourselves, and we've put ourselves, in a very good place to continue to provide very capable but lower-cost ships to the Navy,” he said of the yard that today builds Independence-variant LCSs and Expeditionary Fast Transit (EPF) ships. “I have had some discussions with [Defense Secretary Mark] Esper, we are encouraged by the plan for, the need and the requirement for 355 ships or more maybe. And I think there's plenty of opportunities for us to help the Navy grow the fleet, and we're putting ourselves in a very good position to help the Navy do that long-term.” The yard expansion gives Austal ownership of a dry dock it was leasing to launch its ships into the Mobile River, eliminating any schedule problems the yard had to worry about in the past if its desired timeline didn't match up with the dry dock's availability to be leased. “We'll just have complete control over it, and then we can have the priority for the dry dock be supporting our business, first and foremost,” Perciavalle said. He added that the rest of the facility, on the other side of the river and just south of Austal's property, could be refurbished or upgraded in the future to support ship construction or repair activities as needed, giving Austal some flexibility as its future workload becomes clearer. Many in the Navy and industry have expressed concern about Austal's future, with the company's LCS construction coming to an end in a couple years – four ships are in construction at Austal and four more are in pre-construction – and its future with the EPF program still uncertain, as the Navy and Congress haven't made any firm decisions about continuing the hot production line to build an ambulance ship variant of the hull. Austal competed to build the Navy's FFG(X) frigate program and lost, leaving many wondering what would happen to the yard, its workforce and its suppliers. Perciavalle said he's not worried about the yard's future. “It's no secret that we're focused on the unmanned side of the business, we think there's obviously plenty of opportunities there and we're going to, hopefully – our plan is to be a major player in that side of the market,” he said. Austal is one of six companies selected to conduct industry studies on the Navy's Large Unmanned Surface Vessel, and Austal also participated in the LUSV precursor by converting a vessel to an unmanned ship through the Pentagon's Overlord USV prototype effort. “We are encouraged by discussions around additional EPFs going forward. EPF-15 has been in and out of the budget, and the latest discussions show that there might be some opportunities for that to get back in. I think it's no secret that we've been looking at expeditionary medical ships that have been discussed, and we feel we're in a pretty good place to support those needs to the Navy,” he continued, with the Congress this current fiscal year appropriating money to give EPF-14 a greater medical capability. “And then from a steel shipbuilding perspective, there's certainly opportunities from that medium-sized type vessel: [Light Amphibious Warship] is one that we've been participating in. We have participated in some of the industry studies on [the Coast Guard's Offshore Patrol Cutter]. And without getting into much more detail beyond that, there's opportunities that exist across the board that we're going to continue to look at and to pursue. “ Asked by USNI News if the range of work – from unmanned vessels to amphibious ships to Military Sealift Command support ships to Coast Guard cutters – spurred Austal to take a leap of faith and expand the shipyard now, Perciavalle said, “this is something that Austal's done in the past, so been there done that. We leaned into the facility that we have today, committing much of those funds before (LCS) block buys were even awarded back in the ‘09 and 2010 time period. We have seen where the Navy looks like they're going, and we're leaning into those requirements going forward. There seems to be opportunities both on the steel ship side of things as well as aluminum, and we're going to leverage our strength and what we've been able to do from an aluminum perspective, and take those same strengths and transition adding the steel capabilities.” “So yeah, it's pretty interesting times, it's pretty exciting. We've proven in the past that we're pretty darn good at building lots of ships in a relatively short period of time. I think we've delivered 23 surface ships to the Navy over the last just over seven and a half years,” he continued. “We believe there's value in that for the Navy and trying to expand to 355 in a reasonable timeframe, and I think leveraging the industrial base that we have here in Mobile is going to be important to the Navy's ability to do that.” In addition to the physical expansion of the yard through the recent acquisition, Austal and the Defense Department are spending $100 million to bring a steel shipbuilding capability to the yard that today only builds aluminum ships. DoD offered its half under the Defense Production Act Title III (DPA) Agreement “to maintain, protect, and expand critical domestic shipbuilding and maintenance capacity,” according to a DoD announcement. The money, appropriated as part of the coronavirus pandemic relief bill passed by Congress in the spring, will not only help the Navy industrial base but will “accelerat[e] pandemic recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast region” by supporting the economy. Perciavalle said the yard decided to match the contract with its own $50 million investment in the steel shipbuilding capability. Perciavalle said another growth area for Austal is likely to be ship repair, though the Navy has not made its intentions public yet. Austal is somewhat challenged in that every single LCS it has built is stationed in San Diego, which is a Panama Canal transit away. The San Diego ship repair industrial base is under pressure to keep up with the Navy's growing surface ship maintenance and modernization needs, and although Austal has a support office in San Diego and can contribute to pier-side work at the naval base, it cannot take on maintenance availabilities on its own yet. “The Navy's aware of our interest in expanding our service business, and I think given the fact that they're looking for increased capacity in that regard, I think it's welcome,” he said. “And then we'll just see how things go both here in Mobile, obviously continuing to support efforts on the West Coast, and then in Singapore,” where Austal has an office to support forward-deployed LCSs operating in the Indo-Pacific region. USNI News previously reported that Austal was trying to conduct some LCS work in Mobile after sea trials and ship delivery, but before the ships headed through the canal and onto San Diego. Perciavalle said that has continued, but that the ships are coming out of the yard with very little work waiting to be done during the post-shakedown availability. He said he hopes the Navy and the yard can find a way to bring more repair work to Mobile, to ease the strain in San Diego and to fully leverage the dry dock the yard now owns. Additionally, while his focus is maintaining the ships that Austal built, Perciavalle said “the sky is the limit” in terms of the yard taking on repair and modernization work for Military Sealift Command ships, Coast Guard ships or commercial vessels. “The facility has been in the past supporting various markets and will continue to do that going forward,” he said of the newly purchased property that also includes deep-water berthing space for in-water repairs in addition to the dry dock for out-of-water repairs. He noted that the team operating out of Singapore had contributed to the success of overlapping USS Montgomery (LCS-8) and USS Gabrielle Giffords (LCS-10) deployments there and that Austal planned to maintain or grow its presence in Singapore. “Our game plan is there will be at least two ships there going forward, we are fully prepared to support having two ships in Singapore or more,” as well as sending flyaway teams or setting up offices anywhere else the Navy chooses to hub the LCSs or EPFs around the globe. https://news.usni.org/2020/09/15/austal-expanding-yard-in-alabama-as-it-eyes-new-unmanned-amphibious-shipbuilding-programs

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  11 juillet 2023 | International, Aérospatial

  US Senator Warren, others warn against L3Harris plan to buy Aerojet

  U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat and frequent merger critic, joined three other lawmakers on Tuesday to urge the Defense Department to thoroughly review defense contractor L3Harris Technologies' $4.7 billion deal for Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings .

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  23 avril 2020 | International, C4ISR

  FCC and Ligado are undermining GPS – and with it, our economy and national security

  Sen. Jim Inhofe, Sen. Jack Reed, Rep. Adam Smith, Rep. Mac Thornberry Right now, the coronavirus is rightly our country's most immediate concern. But the Federal Communications Commission has used the crisis, under the cover of darkness, to approve a long-stalled application by Ligado Networks — a proposal that threatens to undermine our global positioning system (GPS) capabilities, and with it, our national security. The FCC granted Ligado (formerly known as LightSquared) permission to repurpose spectrum adjacent to GPS frequencies for a terrestrial cellular network — framing this proposal as essential to “winning the race to 5G.” But what Ligado has done is conflate two different and important spectrum issues: the sharing of mid-band 5G spectrum by the Department of Defense and commercial industry, and harmful interference of Ligado's signal with the low-band GPS signals used in nearly every aspect of daily life. The result: some members of Congress, members of the administration, and the public are now confused about the real and immediate impacts of Ligado's proposal. So, we wanted to clarify things: domestic 5G development is critical to our economic competiveness against China and for our national security. The Pentagon is committed working with government and industry to share mid-band spectrum where and when it makes sense to ensure rapid roll-out of 5G. [Editor's note: C4ISRNET first broke the news that the FCC would move forward with Ligado's request on April 10.] The problem here is that Ligado's planned usage is not in the prime mid-band spectrum being considered for 5G — and it will have a significant risk of interference with GPS reception, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The signals interference Ligado's plan would create could cost taxpayers and consumers billions of dollars and require the replacement of current GPS equipment just as we are trying to get our economy back on its feet quickly — and the FCC has just allowed this to happen. Think of all the ways Americans use GPS each and every day. GPS satellites provide free precise timing and navigation that powers thousands of functions: making financial transactions at our banks, keeping the lights on in our homes, traveling around the country — the list goes on and on. Studies show GPS satellites contribute at least $1 billion to our economy every single day. GPS also forms the backbone of countless military operations and applications — to get supplies to our war fighters on the battlefield, guide unmanned aircraft and vehicles, target its precision weapons, and much more. It would be practically impossible to identify and repair or replace all of the potentially adversely affected receivers. It would “needlessly imperil [Department of Defense] GPS-dependent national security capabilities,” per Secretary Esper, putting the war fighter, U.S. Space Force, military readiness, and even the defense of our homeland at risk. American families and businesses would lose coverage or be forced to use systems from our strategic competitors, China and Russia, jeopardizing our global leadership in precision timing. We're not the only ones with serious concerns. Nine federal departments and agencies have completed extensive engineering tests and analyses on Ligado's proposal; and the results are clear: Ligado's plan would interfere with millions of GPS receivers across the nation. The Departments of Defense, Commerce, Interior, Justice, Homeland Security, Energy, and Transportation — as well as NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Coast Guard and the Federal Aviation Administration — all strongly object to Ligado's plan. What kind of precedent is the FCC setting by disregarding near unanimous opposition of federal agencies to this proposal? It's not just the government, either — industry leaders representing GPS, satellite communications services, automotive companies, commercial aviation, and weather data have also voiced concerns over Ligado's proposal. We would expect that the FCC listen not just to Ligado's privately funded research, but also broad-based, in-depth research from experts in national security and other fields. This makes it all the more confusing — why is the FCC ignoring all the evidence, especially now, at the height of a global crisis? The Ligado application highlights the need to use a technical, data-driven approach to balance the use of the spectrum between war fighter requirements and commercial needs, rather than strong-arming a proposal through the process like the FCC just did. We can expect this issue to be an ongoing national security challenge. If we want to strike a responsible balance moving forward, the U.S. government must modernize the infrastructure needed to manage and share spectrum efficiently, promote policy and technology innovation, and improve the ability of military systems to operate alongside commercial systems. Considering the risks, it's clear the FCC commissioners made the wrong decision regarding Ligado's plan, which will set a disastrous precedent while impeding ongoing work on spectrum sharing. The vulnerabilities to our national and economic security are not worth the risk, particularly for a band of spectrum that isn't necessary to secure a robust 5G network. We encourage the FCC to withdraw its approval of Ligado's application and take this opportunity to work with the NTIA and other federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense and Transportation, to find a solution that will both support commercial broadband expansion and protect national security assets. Moreover, we expect the FCC to resolve Department of Defense concerns before moving forward, as required by law. If they do not, and unless President Trump intervenes to stop this from moving forward, it will be up to Congress to clean up this mess. Senator Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., is the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., is the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, is the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee. https://www.c4isrnet.com/breaking-news/2020/04/22/fcc-and-ligado-are-undermining-gps-and-with-it-our-economy-and-national-security/