Inde: conclu il y a deux ans, l'achat de «Rafale» à la France fait polémique

Sur le même sujet

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  6 août 2020 | International, C4ISR

  How Army network modernization efforts ensure equipment works with allies

  Andrew Eversden A critical piece of the U.S. Army's network modernization push is ensuring its systems work with allies. In future battles, the Army will not fight alone; it will be joined by coalition partners, as well as other U.S. services. As the Army moves to improve its integrated tactical network, it must ensure that its network tools work with coalition and service partners The Army recently completed a critical design review of Capability Set '21 a set of new network tools that will be delivered to soldiers next year. The service is in the first phase of procuring the new capabilities. A “key factor” involved in delivery to soldiers at the battalion level and below is a move to a 75 percent “secure but unclassified” network that provides improved communication between coalition partners, said Col. Garth Winterle, project manager for tactical radios at the Army's Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical. “We're moving off of an all-secret network to one that's a lot more flexible and actually encourages coalition interoperability,” Winterle said. One opportunity to test interoperability was Defender Europe 2020, which was meant to be one of the largest European exercises involving both the U.S. Army and NATO allies, but had to be scaled down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Still, the Army was able to test interoperability There were a series of pre-Defender Europe exercises to assess capabilities “to inform future network design,” according to Justine Ruggio, director of communications for the Network Cross-Functional Team at Army Futures Command. These assessments included several pieces of Capability Set '21, including communications exercises and validation exercises with the Army's fielded Command Post Computing Environment software, Tactical Server Infrastructure and Commercial Coalition Equipment “to enable the use of the Mission Partner Environment, which allowed all participants to share classified information during the exercise, including the Polish and U.K.,” Ruggio said. During the pre-Defender Europe tests, “we were able to bridge the Polish and U.K. unit into an integrated command structure using our secret releasable network and create that common command-and-control picture,” Col. Lesley Kipling, the mission command lead and Army National Guard liaison officer to the Network CFT, said in an interview with C4ISRNET. Secret but releasable information is classified at the secret level and can be released to certain coalition partners who have sufficient clearance from their home country. An exercise scheduled for next year, called Warfighter 21-4, will allow for additional interoperability assessments with U.K. and French forces. According to Ruggio, one focus area will be on interoperability using the Network CFT's DevOps model to iterate the Command Post Computing Environment, continue to assess Commercial Coalition Equipment and evaluate the Mission Partner Environment. The event will be aligned with Capability Set '23, the next iteration of network tools. Kipling added that the cross-functional team and its partners are “continuing” to work on policies and training for properly connecting to a coalition network “so that it's not learning on the fly, but that these procedures and policies are codified in a way that they can be standardized and any user can execute whenever they're put in a situation,” she said. Brig. Gen. Joseph Papenfus, chief Information officer and deputy chief of staff of the G6 of U.S. Army Europe, said that the scaled-back nature of Defender Europe did affect network interoperability testing because soldiers were unable to come over from the United States. That means that U.S. Army Europe will focus heavily on European partners during the smaller exercises, Papenfus said, including validating network integration and establishing a secret but releasable network with NATO. “Every opportunity that we have to see how a piece of equipment works within the larger set of the network, we take advantage of that,” Ruggio said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/yahoo-syndication/2020/07/29/how-army-network-modernization-efforts-ensure-equipment-works-with-allies

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  21 janvier 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Is The World’s Fighter Market Set To Thrive In 2020?

  This is an abbreviated article based on the 1200+ word article ‘Can Surging Demand For New Fighters Create New-Generation Momentum?' from Aviation Week & Space Technology's Aerospace 2020 issue. The world's fighter market will thrive in 2020. A long-repressed call to replace aging fighter fleets around the globe is finally gaining momentum, as overall defense spending levels continue to rise. A sharp growth spurt in fighter output in 2020 will revive decades-old production models that not long ago either seemed to be winding down or dormant, and will fuel investments in new long-range weapons, offensive electronic warfare, seamless connectivity, improved sensors and other new capabilities. The world's fighter community also will seek to clarify and define a new generation of tactical combat aircraft systems after 2030. As these programs come into sharper focus, the pressure will grow on industry, particularly in the U.S. and UK, to break from the traditional business model. As military officials become impatient with development schedules measured in decades, support is growing for acquisition policies that foster greater levels of competition by transferring ownership of the underlying technology to the government and away from the original equipment manufacturers. More impressively, the growth spurt in 2021 is expected even as the growth rate for the F-35 program begins to slow down, with the single-engine fighter family's share of the Western fighter market falling to 57% in 2021 from 65% in 2020. The slack will be picked up mainly by another U.S. company. Boeing's share of the overall fighter market will rise to 19% in 2021 from 12% in 2020, as the U.S. Air Force revives F-15EX deliveries and the Navy receives the first F/A-18E/F Block III. For the first time in nearly three decades, it is a good time to be in the fighter business. The market for new deliveries shrank dramatically after the Cold War and never regained momentum as production ramp-ups were prolonged and in some cases strangled. The tide has turned since 2017 especially as the market's most dominant player, the Lockheed Martin F-35, finally began a steep climb to full-rate production in 2023. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/z/worlds-fighter-market-set-thrive-2020?elq2=064db0d3873a4d659f22c8952ec14826

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  30 octobre 2020 | International, Naval

  Marine Hovercraft From Textron Flawed by Propeller Cracks

  By Anthony Capaccio The U.S. Navy accepted delivery this year from Textron Inc. of the first two in a new generation of hovercraft for the Marines despite “extensive propeller blade cracking” that will require a redesign, according to service officials and documents. The previously undisclosed problem was discovered during mid-2019 tests of the $5.7 billion program to build new air-cushion hovercraft to move Marines from ship to shore. Even with the cracks unresolved, the Navy awarded Textron a $386 million contract for 15 more hovercraft that Congress had approved for fiscal years 2017-2020. But ordering those vessels was held up pending resolution of other technical problems, including issues with the main gearbox, drive-train integration and lubrication system, navigation electronics and bearings. The first two deliveries, in February and August, were each three years late. Hovercraft “have always been important for supporting the Marine Corps' ability to land forces ashore, and in coming years they are to form part of the toolkit for implementing the Corps' new wartime island-hopping strategy for countering Chinese military forces in the Western Pacific,” Ronald O'Rourke, an analyst with the Congressional Research Service, said. Taking delivery of the first two hovercraft allowed the Navy to begin initial operator training and “to move into the post-delivery test and trials period as we identify long-term” solutions for vessels in production, Navy spokeswoman Colleen O'Rourke said in an email. She described the flaws as “micro-cracks” in the composite structure of the blades that don't pose a safety hazard or “an immediate impediment” to operations. “The program is the first major naval acquisition program in more than 15 years to be designed ‘in-house' by the Navy rather than by private industry,” according to a Navy fact sheet. Reinforced Blades O'Rourke said the Navy, Providence, Rhode Island-based Textron and subcontractor Dowty Propellers, a division of General Electric Co., conducted a study “to understand the underlying cause and mechanisms to improve propeller blade performance.” That led to a near-term plan to provide “reinforced blade sets that will deliver later this year” while production and post-delivery testing continue and “blade redesign efforts are underway,” she said. She added that the eventual solution for the 73 hovercraft, known as Ship to Shore Connectors, “is not anticipated to result in any significant program cost increases.” Scott Donnelly, Textron's chief executive officer, told analysts Thursday on an earnings call that the program is “steadily improving” and “we're starting to feel good about that.” He said the contractor has “started to get more craft deliveries, the production lines are starting to run better, we're starting to get supply parts coming in at the right time” so “that's a program that obviously is going to start to be a contributor to the profit in the rest of the businesses.” Textron rose 6.6% to $34.21 at 10:24 a.m, the most since July 30, after third-quarter earnings per share from continuing operations beat the average analyst estimate. Currently, 12 additional hovercraft are under construction in Slidell, Louisiana. The vessels will replace the aging Landing Craft Air Cushion vehicle that became operational in 1986. The Ship-to-Shore Connector is a “franchise program” for Textron's Marine & Land Systems division, “which could more than double in revenue over the coming years as production accelerates,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Douglas Rothacker said in an email. Textron reports third-quarter earnings Thursday. Procurement funding is projected to soar from $20 million the Navy requested for this fiscal year to almost $380 million by 2025, according to program documents. The Navy's fiscal 2021 Selected Acquisition Report, obtained by Bloomberg News, said initial “Builders Trial” testing in mid-2019 uncovered “technical concerns with the propeller blades.” This resulted in a decision to divide the subsequent formal acceptance test into two events -- “unloaded” and “loaded,” which simulated carrying a 74-ton M1 tank. “After the loaded builders test, craft inspection revealed extensive propeller blade cracking,” it said. “To avoid additional blade loss,” the first vessel's acceptance tests “were conducted unloaded.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-29/marines-combat-hovercraft-from-textron-have-cracked-propellers