Israel company targets opportunities in Europe and Asia for software-defined radios

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  21 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Pentagon Pumps $3B Into Industry As COVID-19 Delays Loom

  PENTAGON: The Pentagon's acquisition chief today said she expects major defense programs to be delayed by around three months due to COVID-19 closures and disruptions, while DoD rushes to pump $3 billion into the defense industry to bolster programs at greatest risk. Speaking to reporters here this morning, Lord said she expects to have to ask the White House and Congress for “billions” more to reimburse contractors affected by work delays and broken supply chains. “We believe it will cost us something,” she said, declining to get any more specific than “billions” of dollars. The months-long delays to programs will likely be spread throughout the defense industry as small parts suppliers shut down operations for days or weeks at a time. “We're looking at schedule delays and inefficiencies and so forth: this isn't about a particular program.” Lord singled out “a slowdown in the shipyards, to an extent. Aviation is actually the most highly impacted sector we have right now.” It's unclear what programs are at highest risk, but the Navy has been bullish on speeding up its new frigate program to award contracts some time this summer. If work slowdowns continue, that could be pushed further down the road. The Army and Navy have also been moving ahead on their nascent hypersonic weapons program, with a series of critical tests planned this year. Lord pointedly suggested that large defense companies need to start pushing more money into their supplier base to ensure small parts suppliers don't go out of business, further impacting new programs and ongoing maintenance efforts. She did praise Lockheed and Boeing for increasing cash flow to lower-tier suppliers, then not-so-subtly says, she is “hoping for similar public announcements from other major primes.” Last month, Lockheed said it would advance more than $100 million to suppliers hurt by the slowdown, and this week Boeing said it was reopening the Philadelphia-area facility where it makes the Chinook, the V-22 Osprey and other helicopters. The Pentagon is starting to award higher progress payment rates this week, pumping $3 billion dollars in increased cash flow to industry. “We try to anticipate the problems and work with the companies to keep going to the greatest degree possible,” Lord said. As part of that effort, DoD's first priority is the modernization process of the nuclear triad, she said: “we look at the Missile Defense Agency, we look at the critical capabilities. We're looking where the greatest pain points are.” While she singled out Lockheed and Boeing, shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls is making a push to speed up contracts and get money into the hands of sub-tier suppliers early, in order to ensure companies way down the supply base food chain can continue chugging along. In a recent interview, company representatives told me they've reached out to over 2,000 suppliers in 48 of the 50 US states. “We need their products today, but we also need them in 90 days, so we want to help them brave the storm,” said Lucas Hicks, vice president of new construction aircraft carrier programs. “We've actually changed some payment terms on some of our supplier contracts to try to make sure that we can front them what they need to stay afloat. We're doing some creative stuff to try and help them be able to weather the storm.” The Department's efforts to backstop the defense industrial base while taking steps to protect its workforce and purchase critical protective clothing like facemasks is still in its relative stages, despite the COVID-19 pandemic having been with us for months. “We are just really beginning to pick up momentum,” Lord said. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/pentagon-pumps-3b-into-industry-as-covid-19-delays-loom

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  14 octobre 2020 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR

  US Army pegs 2023 as tipping point for ending old weapons

  Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Army will see a significant shift in funding from its current fleet to new and modern capability designed to fight in multidomain operations in fiscal 2023, Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy told Defense News in an Oct. 8 interview. The service has conducted several rounds of “night court” reviews already, a deep dive across the Army's portfolios to determine whether money is in the right place to ensure modernization priorities are getting what they need to progress. In FY18 and FY19, the Army focused on the science and technology portfolio, but in FY20 ramped up the process finding north of $25 billion to apply to modernization priorities across the next five years. The FY21 and FY22 process was similar and still resulted in a substantial amount of funding that was redirected, according to McCarthy. “We're basically lining ourselves up for the '23 program where you will see a much more aggressive effort like you saw in FY20,” McCarthy said. “The choices are going to get bigger and tougher, but that's necessary” as modernized programs begin to be fielded, he said. “That will force us to make harder calls with legacy systems that will have to be forced to end their service life.” The FY22 night court review has wrapped up, and the number of canceled, reduced or delayed programs is less than in previous years. The Army still had to make some hard decisions, Lt. Gen. James Pasquarette, the Army G-8, told Defense News in a separate Oct. 8 interview, but there were fewer. “It did still result in dozens of reductions and eliminations, but smaller, much smaller than in the past.” In FY20, for example, the Army canceled, delayed or reduced 186 programs. In FY21 that number was roughly 80. “I feel better now than I did on the front end of this thing a year ago,” Pasquarette said, “and how we were going to make ends meet.” Pasquarette, who manages the night court process, said a year ago that after two deep dives he was concerned there wouldn't be enough low-hanging fruit to move over to fund modernization at the levels needed in the coming years. But since the Army has already found $37 billion total from the previous night courts and no major changes have been made to the strategy or what is being prioritized, less needs to move around because everything is in the right place, according to Pasquarette. Yet in FY23 some big programs will begin to go out to units such as the Maneuver-Short Range Air Defense System (M-SHORAD), next-generation squad weapons, enhanced night-vision goggles, the Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) systems, the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) and ground-launched hypersonic weapons. “So in our fires community, massive changeover,” McCarthy said, “so units will be taking on new weapon systems, changing their task organizations, so you have to start divesting legacy weapon systems at a much greater rate of speed. ... Then as you get towards the back end of the [five-year defense plan] FYDP, in '25 and '26, here come the helicopters.” In FY23, McCarthy said, the Army will also make trades in order to invest in logistics to accommodate new weapons. Questions center on determining whether there are appropriate hangars, maintenance facilities and ranges that accommodate greater lethality and range for things like the Long-Range Precision Fires capabilities. More difficult decisions could be around the corner should the defense budget face cuts in the future. Some are projecting numbers as high as a 20 percent cut in military spending if there is a change in the administration. “If we see a reduced top line, I do wonder what would be the impact to some of the things that we put in place,” Lt. Gen. Thomas Horlander, the Army's comptroller, told Defense News earlier this month. “How will things like our modernization plan become pressurized? And so definitely a reduced top line will pressurize some of the programs and we'll be making some tough decisions.” Should the Army face cuts, McCarthy said, “we'll have a hard look at our readiness portfolio.” The Army has “been very blessed” to have 27 or 28 brigades at the highest levels of readiness, he added. “So you look at your readiness portfolio and are there ways to do it more efficiently? Do you need that many ready at any given point in time? Can you make an adjustment to that large bucket of funding in the readiness portfolio?” McCarthy asked. On the modernization side, the Army will have to continue to divest legacy platforms, according to McCarthy. “But you also need to take a very hard look” at priority programs to ensure they are correctly lined up, he said. As for quality of life, the Army “will not take much risk there,” McCarthy said. “We're very concerned that we spent over a decade at deficit spending on that side and we've made some pretty substantial moves. We're going to make some more here in the next week or two that you'll hear about ways that we're working to improve upon that.” The Army will do what it can to manage the balance sheet “as efficiently as possible,” McCarthy said. “If the cuts come, they will come. You have to face that down. The fiscal posture of the country has been challenged with the COVID-19 pandemic and we're going to do the best we can with the budgets we are granted.” https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/ausa/2020/10/13/us-army-pegs-fy23-as-tipping-point-for-ending-old-weapons/

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  7 mars 2022 | International, Aérospatial

  Airbus kicks off Franco-Spanish 'Tiger' helo upgrade program '€“ with Germany TBD

  As the German government weighs its options, there is no deadline for Berlin to opt into the attack-helicopter program later, an Airbus spokesperson told Defense News.