30 août 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By: Jaroslaw Adamowski
This story has been updated to provide details about President Trump's decision to stay in the United States rather than make a planned visit to Poland in order to deal with a hurricane at home.
WARSAW, Poland — By 2026, the Polish Ministry of Defence plans to allocate about 185 billion zloty (U.S. $47 billion) toward acquiring new weapons and military equipment, with fifth-generation fighter jets a top priority.
Twenty years after Poland joined NATO, and despite the integration of some Western-made fighter jets and armored vehicles, the country still uses Soviet-designed gear dating back to the 1955 Warsaw Pact.
Poland and other allies in Eastern Europe are intensifying their military modernization efforts in response to Russian activity along NATO's eastern flank and its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.
For 2019, the Polish MoD set a record budget, at more than 44 billion zloty, as required by the country's plan to raise defense spending to 2.1 percent of gross domestic product in 2020, and reach 2.5 percent in 2030. A significant share of the country's defense spending is to be directed at the acquisition of Western-made gear.
Warsaw's potential acquisition of fifth-gen fighters is one of the top modernization projects in the pipeline. In May, Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak said the ministry sent a letter of request to the U.S. regarding Warsaw's plan to acquire 32 F-35A aircraft. The fighters are to replace the Air Force's outdated, Soviet-designed Sukhoi Su-22 and Mikoyan MiG-29 jets.
Negotiations for the jets are taking place as Warsaw is seeking a permanent U.S. military presence in Poland, dubbed “Fort Trump.” Warsaw offered to allocate at least $2 billion toward the project under which the U.S. would build a military base in the country. On June 12, Polish President Andrzej Duda met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington to discuss the initiative and ink a joint declaration on defense cooperation regarding U.S. force posture in Poland.
“The United States plans to enhance its current military presence of approximately 4,500 rotational U.S. military personnel in Poland. This enduring presence is expected to grow by about 1,000 additional U.S. military personnel in the near-term, and would focus on providing additional defense and deterrence capabilities in Poland,” the declaration read. “With the understanding that the increased U.S. force presence in Poland is made sustainable with Polish support, Poland plans to provide and sustain jointly determined infrastructure for the initial package of additional projects listed below, at no cost to the United States and taking into account the planned level of its use by U.S. forces.”
Trump was scheduled to visit Poland, but he canceled the trip to deal with a hurricane at home. The topics of a stronger U.S. troop presence in the country, as well as a potential F-35 sale, were expected to come up.
Trump is instead sending Vice President Mike Pence to observances Sunday marking the 80th anniversary of the start of World War II and for meetings with Polish leaders Monday expected to include new military and energy deals.
But F-35 acquisition negotiations will likely be separate from Fort Trump discussions, as the logistics and technical aspects of a troop deployment deal are nearing a conclusion, according to Tomasz Smura, the director of the research office at the Warsaw-based Casimir Pulaski Foundation.
“If Poland decides to buy the F-35, this will open an array of new possibilities before the Polish Air Force in the upcoming decades. This aircraft offers stealth and interoperability capacities that are currently not available to the Polish military,” Smura told Defense News. “However, there are also some critical voices on this potential purchase. Some analysts doubt whether we should introduce a second type of fighter instead of expanding Poland's fleet of 48 F-16s. This number of modern fighter jets doesn't match Poland's military needs and the country's size. Other analysts add that we're simply not ready to fully use the capacities offered by the F-35, and that further F-16s would suffice to match the current state of development of the air forces of our eastern neighbors.”
Despite the country's rising defense expenditure, some observers also doubt Poland's capacity to finance the F-35 acquisition alongside other ambitious military procurements, such as the Wisla air defense program.
In March 2018, Poland signed a letter of offer and acceptance with the U.S. government to purchase Raytheon's medium-range Patriot system. Under the deal, Warsaw is to acquire two Patriot Configuration 3+ batteries fitted with Northrop Grumman's Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command System, as well as Lockheed Martin-made Patriot Advanced Capability-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles.
Deliveries are expected by the end of 2022, with plans to reach an initial operational capacity around the 2023-2024 time frame, according to data from the Polish MoD.
Warsaw's other procurement plans include short-range air defense systems, combat helicopters for the country's Air Force, new submarines for the Polish Navy, UAVs for various military branches, and the buildup of cyber warfare capacities using new hardware, the ministry said.
21 avril 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Lockheed Martin’s Chief Financial Officer said sustainment is soon to be the most profitable part of the F-35 program.
28 juin 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Dans les ajustements capacitaires de la programmation militaire, figure notamment la lutte anti-drones, identifié comme un « domaine opérationnel clé dans le récent conflit du Haut-Karabakh » par la ministre des Armées, Florence Parly. En effet, les conflits au Donbass, en Libye, et au Haut-Karabakh ont mis en lumière les vulnérabilités des forces françaises dans le domaine de la défense sol-air de courte et moyenne portées. Pour enrayer cette menace, l'armée de Terre a inauguré en janvier le Battle-Lab Terre sur la base de Satory, à Versailles. Des fusils capables de brouiller les fréquences des drones sont en cours de déploiement et un système de radar raccordé à une mitrailleuse, baptisé « Icare », pouvant détruire des drones à distance a été développé. Il doit équiper, d'ici à la fin de l'année, des véhicules de l'avant blindé. Les forces terrestres recevront également à partir de janvier 2022 le système de drone tactique Patroller (Safran Electronics & Defense). « Le conflit du Haut-Karabakh doit nous ouvrir les yeux sur un changement de paradigme », résume Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, directeur de l'Institut de recherche stratégique de l'Ecole militaire (Irsem). Le Monde, 27 juin
15 octobre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense
Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Over recent months, the U.S. Defense Logistics Agency has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, but that's not necessarily benefitting the Defense Department's usual vendors. In fact, the Pentagon contracting arm is seeing fewer small businesses in its traditional supplier base competing for contracts in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the director of the DLA's Office of Small Business Programs, Dwight Deneal, said Tuesday. “Our percentages [of small business involvement] are as high as they've ever been over the past five years, but we are recognizing that the participation level from our supplier base's standpoint has steadily declined,” Deneal said at a small business panel at the Association of the U.S. Army's annual meeting, which was being conducted virtually. “So [the DLA is] looking at the gaps in there and how do we strategically attack those areas where some of our suppliers are just not participating in or winning some DLA contracts,” Deneal said, adding that the agency plans to roll out a new virtual outreach effort next month to reengage its small suppliers. The comments came as the Pentagon faces congressional scrutiny amid reports it awarded lucrative contracts for disposable medical gowns to a handful of unexpected and inexperienced companies despite bids from more than 100 vendors with track records of successfully completing federal procurement contracts. To boot, the Pentagon's allocation of $688 million to aid troubled suppliers of aircraft engine parts as well as shipbuilding, electronics and space launch services is facing anger on Capitol Hill because the money wasn't spent to increase the country's supply of medical equipment. Pentagon officials have denied any wrongdoing and stressed the need to support companies large and small that make up the defense industrial base. Without mentioning either controversy, Deneal said the DLA's dealings on personal protective equipment contracts reflected a commitment to small businesses and efforts to revive domestic supply chains for PPE, widely regarded as a necessity in the wake of the pandemic. “A lot of companies are starting to pivot their assembly lines to start to get into the business of producing PPE, and that has been quite clear from some of our last solicitations ... for gowns, where we had robust competition from small businesses ― companies that had traditionally never bid on government contracts,” Deneal said. “We were able to allow that competition pool and subsequent awards to be small business awards, and I think that speaks to the importance that DLA sees and [places on] the small business community,” Deneal added. “It goes to show how our acquisition community is forward thinking and forward leaning.” The decline in small business participation extends beyond the DLA. The director the Navy's Office of Small Business Programs, Jimmy Smith, said his data showed a similar and “troubling” trend in need of targeted contracting activity by the Navy. “We're spending about the same, equivalent money every year, but one of the things we're watching in our supplier base is a pretty steep decline in industry partners in certain areas,” Smith said. “I think [it's] incumbent upon us to understand what those shortcomings are and [offer] some solicitations, sources sought in a number of areas where we are seeing a decline in industry partner involvement.” Smith plans to address the gap in the coming year by pushing contacting officers to directly deal with small businesses and by enforcing agreements with large contractors that they flow work to smaller partners. “It's definitely troubling from our standpoint on making sure we've got a viable supplier base,” Smith said. “Having a fragile supplier base does us no good, and it actually impacts the war fighter in negative ways.” https://www.defensenews.com/2020/10/13/pentagon-officials-see-troubling-small-business-decline-since-covid/