How the Marine Corps wants to improve oversight of its network

Sur le même sujet

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  18 mars 2022 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Armée française : une remontée en puissance entamée, mais « à mi-chemin »

  Après cinq ans de hausse des crédits budgétaires, l'armée française est mieux équipée et mieux entraînée en 2022 qu'en 2017. Dans sa 4ème année d'exécution, le budget des armées atteint 40,9 Md€ au lieu de 32,3 Md€ en 2017. Les augmentations promises ont été votées avec des marches successives d'1,7 Md€ par an ; la loi de programmation militaire (LPM) votée en 2018 pour la période 2019-2025 est ainsi respectée « à l'euro près » d'après la ministre des Armées, Florence Parly. En 2022, les soldats sont aussi mieux équipés. L'armée de l'Air a reçu de nouveaux ravitailleurs, qui permettent aux avions de chasse d'être projetés à l'autre bout du monde rapidement. L'industrie de défense a aussi profité des programmes de modernisation : entre 2017 et 2022, elle a créé 30 000 emplois, relancé l'innovation et atteint des records sans précédents dans les campagnes d'exportation. La LPM prévoit de réaliser un effort encore plus intense entre 2023 et 2025 pour atteindre quelque 50 Md€ de budget, afin de préparer l'avenir. Ni l'Europe ni la France n'ont encore de systèmes d'alerte avancés antimissiles, de moyens de détecter l'ensemble des débris et objets spatiaux, ni de cloud souverain solide pour protéger leurs données en cas de cyberattaque. « La LPM a permis une remontée en puissance mais nous ne sommes qu'à mi-chemin », confirme-t-on au ministère des Armées. Les Echos du 15 mars

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  5 mars 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Singapore moves to buy four F-35s, possibly eight more afterward

  By: Mike Yeo MELBOURNE, Australia — Singapore will seek to buy four Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters for a start, with an option to purchase eight more, according to the southeast Asian nation's defense minister. Speaking in Parliament on Friday, Ng Eng Hen said Singapore will submit a letter of request to the United States for the purchase, adding that “Singapore has the endorsement of both the U.S. administration and the Department of Defense for our proposed purchase of F-35s.” He did not disclose which version of the F-35 Singapore will request when asked by lawmakers, although he was quoted as ruling out buying the “aircraft-carrier version” of the F-35, and told Parliament that the unit price of the aircraft “ranges from U.S. $90 million to U.S. $115 million.” The prices he quoted are the respective unit prices of the F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing version and the F-35B short-takeoff-and-vertical-landing version under the latest LRIP 11 contract signed in September 2018 between the DoD and manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Earlier reports suggested the land-scarce island nation is keen on the F-35B for its ability to operate from short runways. He also told Parliament that the total cost of ownership of an F-35 fleet including maintenance across its lifespan will be similar to Singapore's current fleet of Boeing F-15SG Eagles. He added, however, that the Defence Ministry “will continue to work with the U.S. Department of Defense to optimize operating and maintenance costs.” Singapore currently operates a fleet of 60 Lockheed Martin F-16C/D Block 52/52+ Fighting Falcons and 40 F-15SGs. It wants the F-35 to replace the former, starting from around 2030. The country typically makes its combat aircraft acquisitions in small, incremental batches, so the relatively small order is not much of a surprise. If the option for the additional aircraft is picked up, Singapore will have the numbers to launch a training detachment, likely based in the United States, to train pilots and maintainers. This is similar to the acquisition structure Singapore adopted for its F-15s and F-16s, with the country currently maintaining a joint U.S. Air Force-Republic of Singapore Air Force training unit for each of those aircraft types in the U.S. made up of personnel from both countries, in Idaho and Arizona respectively. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/avalon/2019/03/01/singapore-moves-to-buy-four-f-35s-possibly-eight-more-afterward/

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  23 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Trilateral Tempest Expands Industrial Base

  Tony Osborne Ninety percent of Britain's front-line combat aircraft are crewed, but British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace says he expects a “major reversal” of these proportions by 2040. Wallace's speech at the opening of a virtual Farnborough Airshow on July 20—a message reminiscent of the late Duncan Sandys' 1957 defense white paper that declared the manned fighter redundant and guided and ballistic missiles to be the future of Britain's defense—may hint at a radically altered Royal Air Force (RAF) with heavy fielding of swarming UAVs and other additive capabilities such as “loyal wingmen” dominating fleets. But Wallace's comments also touched on the trajectory for the UK-led Tempest Future Combat Air System (FCAS), which is targeted to begin to replace the UK's fleet of Eurofighter Typhoons from 2035. Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, chief of the Air Staff, said at the RAF's annual air power conference on July 15 that he intended any FCAS to be optionally manned. Sandys' defense plan sent reverberations through the UK aerospace industry, but the vision for the Tempest calls for a similar fundamental revolution. Saab spending £50 million on UK FCAS hub Technologies are being matured to support year-end business case submission BAE Systems says its factory of the future will subsume the need for heavy, fixed and long-lead tooling—halving production time compared with previous programs. And industry is looking to new players for cybersecurity technology from the banking world and materials technology from the automotive sector, companies from outside the typical defense industrial base. Two years since the announcement of Team Tempest—the industry consortium of BAE Systems, Leonardo, MBDA, Rolls-Royce and the British government's Combat Air Strategy that coalesced at the 2018 Farnborough Airshow—the group is growing for the first time, with the inclusion of Bombardier UK, Collins Aerospace, GE UK, GKN, Martin-Baker, Qinetiq and Thales UK. The additions to the team come in the form of a first wave of industrial agreements, with BAE hinting that more industrial partners will follow. Of the new partners, Collins announced it had been contracted by BAE to provide advanced actuation capabilities. Sweden's Saab announced also on July 20 that it is investing £50 million ($58 million) into the creation of an FCAS center in the UK. The facility will serve as a hub for the company's participation in the FCAS and represent Stockholm's first tentative steps into the venture. Saab does not name the Tempest specifically, with CEO Micael Johansson hinting that Sweden's involvement is focused more on the technology rather than the future platform. “Saab's FCAS strategy ensures that the technology is in place to support a long-term future air capability and also to support continuous upgrades of Gripen E for decades to come,” Johansson said. While the international partnership model for the Tempest has yet to be finalized, British officials have suggested that the partnerships could be agile and scalable. In other words, allowing nations to “partner in a way that suits them,” Richard Berthon, the UK Defense Ministry's Combat Air acquisition program director, previously told Aviation Week (AW&ST July 13-26, p. 52). Johannsson said nations looking to refresh their fleets with the current generation of fighters, like the Gripen or Typhoon, should not be concerned about the push to deliver the Tempest during the 2030s. “A strong joint partnership around a future combat air system will also guarantee Gripen and Eurofighter access to new technologies,” Johannsson said. Existing customers, he said, should see the FCAS as a “seal of approval as we safeguard continuous fighter development.” Until now, the work between the national partners had been on a bilateral basis. The aim was “to define our common objectives,” BAE Systems CEO Charles Woodburn says. But this work has now extended into trilateral studies that include “assessing how we can start to realize the huge potential for collaboration across our three nations,” Woodburn says. Although the talks are now trilateral in nature, the UK says it is still keen to see more international partners “join our flightpath to discovery,” Wallace adds. Industry is already beginning to think trilaterally, with GKN Aerospace in Sweden confirming it will work with Rolls-Royce in the UK and Avio Aero in Italy on feasibility studies for a future fighter jet engine. GKN states it was contracted in the first quarter of 2020 by Sweden's defense materiel agency, FMV, to conduct a study in collaboration with Rolls-Royce. Few details have emerged on the 60 technology demonstration programs currently being developed and matured by Team Tempest in support of the UK Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI). Michael Christie, BAE's head of Future Combat Air Systems, says work on maturing the technologies ready to support the business case submission to the British government at the end of this year has seen the partners “at least achieve or exceed” the maturity targets set, doing so “at great pace” and providing “fundamental evidence to the business case.” “Every one of these [60] projects will deliver a UK, European or world first,” says Cecil Buchanan, the RAF Rapid Capability Office's chief scientist. https://aviationweek.com/ad-week/trilateral-tempest-expands-industrial-base