How the Pentagon still struggles to explain its massive cloud contract

Sur le même sujet

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  8 juin 2020 | International, Terrestre

  Nouvelle étape franchie pour le programme MGCS

  Les trois partenaires du programme MGCS (Main Ground Combat System), les groupes allemands Rheinmetall et Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW) et le groupe français Nexter, ont signé fin mai le premier contrat d'études avec le BAAINBw (l'office fédéral allemand de l'Equipement, des Technologies de l'information et du Soutien en service de la Bundeswehr), établissant le partage de la charge de travail industriel, rapporte l'Usine Nouvelle. L'Usine Nouvelle du 8 juin

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  14 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  The US military’s chaff and flare industry is on fragile ground

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The two companies responsible for producing chaff and flares for U.S. military aircraft could be poised for a major shakeup, and the Pentagon and congressional critics have begun sounding the alarm about this small, vulnerable segment of the defense-industrial base. In an October report to the White House on the health of the defense-industrial base, the Pentagon relayed concerns about the small number of domestic chaff and flare producers, and stated that weakened demand — especially for flares — could leave companies little incentive to make internal investments. Only one producer of chaff exists in the United States: Esterline Defense Technologies, also known as Armtec. Esterline, which also makes flares, is joined by one other domestic flare manufacturer: Kilgore Flares Co., a part of Chemring Countermeasures USA, which itself is a subsidiary of a firm based in the United Kingdom. This already precarious industrial situation may be further rattled by TransDigm Group Inc.'s proposed acquisition of Esterline, two lawmakers said. In an Oct. 29 letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, Reps. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and Walter Jones, R-NC, called on the Defense Department to block the deal until its inspector general completed an investigation into TransDigm's business practices. The letter was first reported by The Capitol Forum. “TransDigm has repeatedly purchased companies that are the sole providers of Department of Defense items and engaged in price gouging,” Speier and Jones wrote. “The abuses have been sufficiently common and severe enough to warrant a DoD inspector general investigation. Unsurprisingly, Esterline is the sole DoD chaff provider and one of two flare providers. The alarm bells should be ringing.” The industrial base issues, however, extend far beyond TransDigm's proposed acquisition. A small but critical market Chaff and flare are countermeasures used by military planes and helicopters to help evade a missile attack by an enemy aircraft. For the non-stealthy fourth-generation assets that make up the bulk of the services' inventory, these systems are pivotal to that aircraft's defense. Chaff — which comprises “millions of tiny aluminum or zinc-coated fibers” — is stored onboard an aircraft in tubes and ejected behind the plane to confuse radar-guided missiles, the Pentagon's defense-industrial base report stated. Meanwhile, flares distract heat-seeking, infrared-guided missiles “by ejecting magnesium pellets from tubes to ignite in the wake behind an aircraft,” the report states. Those pellets are so hot — more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit — that the temperature exceeds that of the aircraft's engine or exhaust, tricking an infrared-guided missile about the path of the aircraft. According to the industrial base report, “defense unique requirements and decreasing DoD demand drove out other suppliers, leaving a single qualified source for chaff.” Peter Navarro, the White House's director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, called attention to the fragile chaff supply base during a Nov. 9 speech at the Center of Strategic and International Studies, calling it a “single point of failure.” Meanwhile, the outlook for flare companies seems even more grim, with the report noting a number of explosions that had plagued both Esterline and Kilgore over the past several years, often leading to factorywide shutdowns that delayed deliveries of product to the Defense Department. “Both companies have experienced quality and delivery problems since the accidents,” the report stated. “As program offices look to improve quality and cost, they are beginning to look offshore at more modern facilities, where there are fewer quality and safety concerns.” One of the biggest problems facing chaff and flare manufacturers is the fluctuating demand signal from the Defense Department — their only customer for the product — based on the military's operational needs, the Association of Old Crows, a professional organization centered on electronic warfare and other countermeasures, said in a statement to Defense News. “Spending on countermeasures flares in the U.S. and among several NATO allies surged during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom and then dropped sharply as these conflicts reduced their operations tempo or wound down,” the organization stated. “The industrial base is small, yet it must be able to meet big fluctuations in customer demand. This creates a tremendous challenge that could be managed more successfully with better coordination among U.S. military customers or even between NATO partners." A history of safety issues and scandal Though chaff and flare companies usually fly under the radar of the defense trade press, when they do appear in the media, it's usually related to life-threatening accidents at manufacturing facilities or the like. In May 2016, Esterline was forced to temporarily halt operations at its plant in East Camden, Arkansas, after an explosion injured two employees. Local newspaper El Dorado News Times reported that one of the victims suffered “a blast to the face,” which left burns on the hands, chest and face, and took shrapnel to the elbow, according to a Facebook post by the victim's relative. Kilgore Flares also sustained several high-profile accidents in recent years, most notably a 2014 explosion that killed one employee at its factory in Toone, Tennessee. The same plant was the site of a 2016 explosion where no one was injured, according to WBBJ 7 Eyewitness News. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigation of the 2014 incident, the worker had been removing residual flare materials that ignited, prompting the explosion. “The investigation identified noncompliance in process safety information, process hazard analysis and ... operating procedures. The employee suffered severe burns on multiple areas of his body and was transported to a hospital, where he received medical treatment and burn therapy, but died from his injuries,” the administration had said. Kilgore also came under the scrutiny of the U.S. Justice Department in 2016 for selling the Army flares made with magnesium that a supplier — ESM Group Inc. — illegally imported from China. The company was fined $8 million for violating a requirement that all magnesium used to make flares be sourced from American or Canadian suppliers, reported the Memphis-based CBS affiliate WREG. Kilgore and Esterline did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Pat Kumashiro, former head of the maintenance division for the Air Force's Logistics, Engineering and Force Protection Directorate and currently director of the Air Force market at LMI, said China is paying attention to weaknesses in the American defense-industrial base. “They are pretty savvy as it relates to understanding global supply chains, and when they have opportunities to buy mineral rights — and you see them doing a lot of work and being very aggressive in Africa — they are doing it for a reason,” he said. If an adversary such as Russia or China identifies that there are a limited number of sources for chaff and flare, they can find ways to impact U.S. suppliers — which in turn degrades the mission capability of fourth-generation planes, Kumashiro said. “Operational pilots are not going to go into harm's way without an operational chaff [and] flare system,” he said. The evolving landscape for chaff and flare Big changes appear to be coming down the pipeline for both Esterline and Kilgore Flares. For the former, the question is whether the Defense Department allows TransDigm to acquire Esterline. "Our general goal in this area is to promote competition among contractors but also ensure that DoD is paying fair prices for the best, most usable products that it can get,” a staff member of Rep. Speier told Defense News. But Speier and his colleague Jones believe TransDigm could artificially inflate prices by claiming there is a commercial market for those products, which would limit the ability of Defense Department procurement officers to have full access to pricing data, the staffer said. Should the Defense Department decide to allow the TransDigm deal to go forward, Speier may push to add language to next year's defense authorization bill that would pose additional limitations on what products are deemed “commercial,” or it could call on the Pentagon to study the level of competition throughout the industrial base, the staffer said. For Kilgore Flares, the changes appear to be more conventionally positive. This May, Chemring Group said it would spend $40 million to expand Kilgore's production facility in Toone and grow the plant's employment numbers from about 280 to 375 people. From 2018-2022, the company plans to improve existing facilities, construct new buildings and buy modern equipment, including a new flare extruder and assembly facility, the company said in a news release. In total, those expenditures will triple the plant's production capacity. Kilgore's investment may indicate that chaff and flare manufacturers see some relief on the horizon. Industry officials who spoke to Defense News about this sector said they were hopeful the Defense Department's industrial base report could indicate a heightened level of Pentagon interest. The department already has certain levers it can pull to address problems in its supply base. One such effort, called the Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment program, involves targeted investments to sustain certain manufacturers who produce a critical capability. Another resource is the Defense Production Act Title III program, which offers grants, purchase commitments, loans or loan guarantees to portions of the industrial base that are weakening. The Defense Department called for an expansion of those programs in recommendations to the White House submitted as part of the industrial base report. A classified annex also includes detailed fixes for certain critical industries. So far, however, it's unclear what assistance could be coming down the pipeline for the chaff and flare industry. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2018/11/13/the-militarys-chaff-and-flare-industry-is-on-fragile-ground

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  13 janvier 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  Lawsuit threatens $23B weapons sale to UAE

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― A small, 2-year-old nonprofit think tank has taken a step that most advocacy organizations never dare try: It has sued the U.S. State Department to derail a $23 billion arms sale to the United Arab Emirates. In a legal claim announced last month, the New York Center For Foreign Policy Affairs asserted that the Trump administration failed to provide a reasonable explanation for its decision to sell F-35 fighter jets and other weapons to the UAE, which places it in breach of the Administrative Procedure Act. It has asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to find the sale invalid. The case is unusual, as is the theory of the case, but so is the Trump administration's approach to the sale, said Brittany Benowitz, a legal expert on human rights and arms trade. Such legal challenges rarely succeed, but if this one does, it could halt the deal even if Washington and Abu Dhabi follow through with plans to sign contracts in the waning days of the Trump administration. “If you can say this deal was executed improperly and the contractor was on notice of that, which they are, then I think you can say it's possible to stop the sale before delivery,” Benowitz said. The State Department declined to comment on the pending litigation, in line with its policy. The new lawsuit against the State Department came after a failed attempt in Congress to block the sale of 50 Lockheed Martin-made F-35 aircraft, 18 General Atomics-made MQ–9B Reaper drones and Raytheon Technologies-made munitions. The Senate narrowly rejected a challenge to the sale amid arguments from the administration that the sales would make the UAE more interoperable with partners and defend itself from “heightened threats from Iran.” Opponents said the fast-tracked process was incomplete, leaving questions about the security of U.S. weapons technology, the potential of sparking a Middle Eastern arms race, and the potential for the weapons to be used in Yemen and Libya; these arguments were echoed in the lawsuit. The State Department came under scrutiny for irregularities in a previous sale. Its inspector general, who was later fired, found that a separate “emergency” sale of $8 billion in precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE failed to “fully assess” or mitigate the risk of civilian casualties in Yemen. To boot, Saudi Arabia and the UAE reportedly breached arms sale agreements with the U.S. by transferring American materiel to al-Qaida-linked fighters and other militant factions in Yemen. Lawmakers have also called for an an investigation into reporting that the UAE may have transferred American-made Javelin anti-armor missiles to the Libyan National Army in violation of a United Nations arms embargo. “What we're saying is that the State Department rushed this through without congressional oversight, they didn't follow their own rules and they didn't apply the same metrics that would guide approval to others,” said Justin Russell, the director of the New York Center For Foreign Policy Affairs. The organization conducts advocacy and research on the conflicts in Libya and Yemen. “Congress tried to block [the sale] on the same merits and when that legislation failed, we said, ‘Wait a minute, we've got to stand up and do something.'” The Administrative Procedure Act allows a court to “hold unlawful and set aside any agency action ... found to be in arbitrary, capricious, an abseils of discretion or otherwise not in accordance with the law.” Here, the lawsuit argues the State Department didn't find, as required under the Arms Export Control Act, that the sale “will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace” ― or present “a reasoned explanation” for its actions as required by the Administrative Procedure Act. In 2019, the Campaign Against the Arms Trade won a U.K. Court of Appeal ruling to ban new arms sales to Saudi Arabia. The government has since renewed sales, and CAAT applied for judicial review into the legality of the U.K. government's decision to renew arms sales to Saudi Arabia. In the U.S., there has not been a successful court case of targeting government-to-government sales in recent years, according to Benowitz. What's also unusual about the New York Center For Foreign Policy Affairs' approach is that it doesn't rely on a human rights argument but rather points to aberrations in the process ― particularly past end-use violations that ought to have have disqualified the UAE, she said. “There have been court challenges to arms sales in the past on human rights grounds, but this challenge on national security grounds under the Administrative Procedure Act is unprecedented,” she said. “It's rare because we have never had a record of irregularities like the one we have now.” By Benowitz's reckoning, if a finalized deal is invalidated in the courts and it is found that the deal never should have been entered in the first place, its unlikely the U.S. could be penalized financially by the UAE. “To get a remedy, or damages, under contract law, you have to have ‘clean hands,' so it would be difficult for the Emiratis to recoup,” she said. https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2021/01/12/lawsuit-threatens-23b-weapons-sale-to-uae