27 juillet 2018 | International, Terrestre
By: Tom Kington
ROME — The Italian Army has signed a €159 million (U.S. $186 million) contract to acquire 10 Centauro II wheeled tanks, the first tranche of a planned 136-vehicle order.
Manufactured by a consortium grouping Italian firms Leonardo and Iveco, the Centauro II is faster, more powerful and better protected than the Centauro tank already in service with the Italian Army, which it will replace.
The new 30-ton Centauro features a 120mm cannon, digital communications and a 720-horsepower engine, and is seen by planners as a lightweight tank able to complement the Freccia armored troop carrier on which the Army is basing its new medium brigades.
The new tank's enhanced digitalization means it will work better with the digital capabilities of the Freccia, and it provides 24 horsepower per ton compared to 19 for the old Centauro.
Generals see the new Centauro as lighter and more flexible than a traditional tank, but with the same destructive power.
The eight wheels of the new Centauro, which make it better suited for peacekeeping operations than a tracked vehicle, extend farther out from the hull of the vehicle than its predecessor to give it greater stability. The new design also means that any mines triggered by the pressure of the tire will detonate further from the hull.
The Iveco-Oto Melara Consortium, or CIO, was established in 1985 on a 50-50 basis between Iveco and Oto Melara, which is now part of Leonardo.
Leonardo said it was responsible for the vehicles' turret, including observation, targeting and communications systems, and was responsible for a €92 million share of the €159 million contract.
18 février 2022 | International, Terrestre
General Dynamics Land Systems brings General Motors Defense onto its team to pitch an optionally manned fighting vehicle as it competes to develop an initial design.
7 août 2019 | International, C4ISR
HUNTSVILLE, Ala., Aug. 6, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- The Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS) operates collectively and continuously through a multi-domain system that connects traditionally autonomous sensors, satellites and weapon systems. Through a $320 million contract, Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) will continue to evolve this multi-domain system, the Command, Control, Battle Management and Communications (C2BMC) system. Fielded and operational since 2004, C2BMC gives commanders at strategic, regional and operational levels an integrated picture of potential or current threats across the globe. Through C2BMC, commanders can make coordinated decisions about the most effective way to engage ballistic missile threats at any range, in any phase of flight. With this contract, Lockheed Martin's team will integrate the Long-Range Discrimination Radar, as well as sensors that provide advanced tracking capabilities for emerging threats into the BMDS. Using an agile development process, the team will enhance C2BMC's threat characterization, tracking and advanced threat warning capabilities through integration with both new and enhanced sensor capabilities. The team will also further harden the overall cybersecurity posture of the system. Lockheed Martin's C2BMC team includes a partnership of highly responsive industry leaders that includes Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon, General Dynamics and many small businesses with expertise in key areas. The new contract extends the team's performance on C2BMC through December 2022. "The critical mission of missile defense requires a full view of incoming threats, actionable options for commanders and the ability to decisively and effectively respond," said JD Hammond, vice president of C4ISR Systems at Lockheed Martin. "C2BMC continues to showcase the benefits of a layered, cross domain defense that can help protect the U.S. and allies from increasing security concerns around the world." There are C2BMC systems located at 36 locations worldwide, including U.S. Strategic, Northern, European, Indo-Pacific and Central Commands. The C2BMC system ties together elements of the MDA, Army, Navy and Air Force systems and sensors to provide a responsive and coherent global capability. https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2019-08-06-U-S-Missile-Defense-Agency-Awards-Lockheed-Martin-320M-Contract-to-Evolve-Foundation-of-Ballistic-Missile-Defense
3 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Steve Trimble May 27, 2020 This was supposed to be a relatively easy year for Lockheed Martin's F-35 production. As 2020 began, the stealth fighter program's three-year growth spurt had subsided after annual deliveries more than doubled between 2017 and 2019. Lockheed planned to deliver 141 F-35s in 2020, only seven more than in 2019. But the F-35 supply chain is not immune from the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After signaling during a first quarter earnings call in April that a production slowdown was likely, Lockheed confirmed the impact on May 19. The company issued a new forecast of 117-124 F-35 deliveries this year. If Lockheed is unable to recover in the second half, the slowdown would mark the first year-over-year decrease in F-35 deliveries since the program began. “However, we will accelerate production when we return to pre-COVID-19 conditions and could see this number decrease,” the company says. The company's new financial guidance reflects the lower F-35 delivery total, with net sales for the year falling to a range of $62.25-64 billion from $62.75-64.25 billion. Other large F-35 suppliers include Northrop Grumman (center fuselage, radar), Raytheon Technologies (engine, distributed aper-ture system) and BAE Systems (aft fuselage, electronic warfare suite). It was not immediately clear which customers and variants would be affected by the potential shortfall of 18-24 F-35 deliveries in 2020. The Defense Department is closely watching the F-35, its single-largest production system. So far, senior acquisition officials expect the overall impact of the novel coronavirus on weapon system production to be manageable. But the Pentagon leadership considers the military aircraft industry an exception. Although demand and domestic U.S. military spending remain intact, the military aviation supply chain's links to the collapsing commercial aircraft market is causing delays. “I think [military] aviation has had a more acute sensitivity to supplier disruptions, largely driven by the massive upheaval in the commercial aviation market,” said James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. “Many of the aerospace companies were blended between military and commercial, and with commercial just falling through the floor, their abilities to stay open and keep their workforce has been a little bit more challenged.” Another sector Geurts is watching is the market for command, control, communications and computers and intelligence (C4I). “We're trying to track all of it,” he says. “But the most immediate impact we've seen has been on aviation.” Lockheed's F-35 assembly line in Fort Worth was hit hard by the COVID outbreak in mid-April. One employee, Claude Daniels, died after reporting COVID-19-related symptoms to a supervisor. Another F-35 employee, who survived, broadcast a Facebook Live video from his hospital bed, pleading with his unionized co-workers to sanitize their workspaces even if it is not in their job description. The company's management has said that the F-35 assembly line adopted new protocols in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which included regularly sanitizing equipment and quarantining employees exposed by co-workers or others to the virus. The COVID-19 response is not the only pressure on the F-35's production system. Lockheed exceeded the overall delivery target by three aircraft in 2019, but slower production of the less mature F-35C airframe nearly caused the company to miss the annual goal. To compensate, Lockheed moved up deliveries of four F-35As originally scheduled for 2020 to the end of 2019, allowing the company to beat the delivery target by three aircraft instead of missing it by one. Before the impact of the virus, the F-35's global supply chain was already strained by the three-year production ramp-up from 2017 to 2019. Late part deliveries jumped to 10,000 in 2019 from 2,000 in 2017, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Monthly parts shortages, meanwhile, leaped to 8,000 in July 2019 from 875 a year before, the GAO says. The shortages represent a fraction of the 300,000 parts in each F-35, but the trend offered a glimpse of the pressure on the supply chain to meet demand during the ramp-up. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/supply-chain/covid-19-infects-defense-industry-f-35-production-slowdown