Retour aux nouvelles

21 janvier 2021 | International, Aérospatial

Just hours before Biden’s inauguration, the UAE and US come to a deal on F-35 sales

By:

WASHINGTON —The United Arab Emirates on Jan. 20 signed off on a deal to purchase up to 50 F-35 joint strike fighter aircraft and 18 MQ-9 Reaper drones from the United States.

According to Reuters, which broke the news, the agreement was one of the final acts of the Trump administration, occurring just an hour before President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed separately to Defense News that the U.S. and UAE officials on Wednesday signed a letter of agreement, which solidifies the terms of a foreign military sale between two nations.

The departments of State and Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The agreement delineates the cost of the aircraft, technical specifications and the schedule for F-35 deliveries to the UAE, people familiar with the deal told Reuters. Those sources could not confirm when the first F-35 is due to be delivered to Abu Dhabi, but stated that an initial proposal stipulated 2027 as one possible date.

The UAE deal was previously estimated at a $23.37 billion value, including 50 F-35A fighters worth $10.4 billion, 18 MQ-9B drones worth $2.97 billion, and $10 billion worth of air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions.

Those dollar totals are expected to shift around during further negotiations with F-35 prime contractor Lockheed Martin and MQ-9 maker General Atomics.

It's unclear whether the incoming administration will seek to undo the deal. Biden's pick for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told reporters in late October that the sale is “something we would look at very, very carefully,” due to U.S. obligations to preserve Israel's qualitative military edge.

In December, the Senate rejected an attempt to block the sale, with Republicans largely voting to preserve the deal. The first vote concerned the drones and munitions and failed 46-50, while the second concerned the F-35s and fell 47-49.

Aaron Mehta and Joe Gould in Washington contributed to this report.

https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2021/01/20/just-hours-before-bidens-inauguration-the-uae-and-us-come-to-a-deal-on-f-35-sales

Sur le même sujet

  • Dassault Aviation a notifié à Thales la fourniture du radar de surveillance Searchmaster pour le programme AVSIMAR

    22 septembre 2021 | International, C4ISR

    Dassault Aviation a notifié à Thales la fourniture du radar de surveillance Searchmaster pour le programme AVSIMAR

    DÉFENSE Dassault Aviation a notifié à Thales la fourniture du radar de surveillance Searchmaster pour le programme AVSIMAR Thales annonce que Dassault Aviation lui a notifié la fourniture du radar de surveillance Searchmaster pour le programme AVSIMAR, ainsi que du système de navigation de mission. Le programme AVSIMAR, sous la maîtrise d'ouvrage de la Direction générale de l'armement et la maîtrise d'œuvre de Dassault Aviation, permettra de renouveler la flotte des avions de surveillance et d'intervention maritimes de la Marine nationale via l'acquisition de 12 Falcon 2000 Albatros de Dassault Aviation. Face à la densité croissante du trafic maritime, « les meilleures capacités de surveillance maritime en zones côtières et littorales sont primordiales pour repérer et suivre des cibles intelligentes et agiles, quels que soient les états de mer et les conditions de visibilité », explique Thales. Les Falcon 2000 Albatros bénéficieront, gr'ce à l'ensemble des équipements fournis, « d'un degré de précision et d'une sensibilité de détection qui pourront alerter par anticipation de la présence d'une menace à la surface de la mer, et garantir ainsi une capacité d'action adaptée », précise le groupe. Zone Militaire et Naval Technology du 22 septembre

  • Pentagon creates new position to help guide software acquisition, F-35 development

    24 avril 2018 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

    Pentagon creates new position to help guide software acquisition, F-35 development

    By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department is creating a new position to help formulate its software strategy and ensure it keeps pace with commercial advancements — and the most important resposiblity will be overseeing the F-35 joint strike fighter's agile software strategy. During a Friday roundtable with reporters, Ellen Lord, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, announced that she has tapped Jeff Boleng to the newly created position of special assistant for software acquisition. Boleng, currently the acting chief technology officer at Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute, will start April 16 as a member of Lord's team. “Jeff Boleng will spend over 90 percent of his time on F-35. He is going to be the individual who is working amongst all of the groups to enable us to bring the right talent onboard,” Lord said. “We have a challenge, I think both within the JPO [F-35 joint program office] as well as Lockheed Martin, in terms of getting a critical mass of contemporary software skill sets to begin to move in the direction we want to.” As the F-35 joint program office embarks on a new strategy called Continuous Capability Development and Delivery, or C2D2, which involves introducing agile software development, Lord wants to ensure that both the JPO and Lockheed have employees with the right training to execute the effort and that they can attract new professionals with additional software expertise. “This is something that [Lockheed CEO] Marillyn Hewson and I have talked about,” she said. “Lockheed Martin has some excellent software capability throughout the corporation. My expectation is that they're going to leverage that on the F-35. And as we within the Department of Defense really increase our capability for software development focused on C2D2, our expectation is that Lockheed Martin will do the exact same thing. “So they have the capability. I'm very energized about the leadership focus that I have seen in the last four to eight weeks, so I have great expectations that that will continue and that Lockheed Martin will keep pace or outpace DoD in terms of modernization for F-35 software development.” Boleng, a former cyberspace operations officer and software engineer who served more than 20 years with the Air Force, last held the position of teaching computer science at the Air Force Academy before moving to the private sector. At Carnegie Mellon, he is responsible for spearheading the institutes research and development portfolio, which includes software development, data analytics and cyber security activities in support of the Defense Department. As the special assistant for software acquisition, he will help develop department-wide software development standards and policies and “advise department leadership on latest best practices in commercial software development.” Boleng will also interface with Pentagon organizations charged with ramping up the department's software prowess such as Defense Digital Services, a small group of former private-sector tech professionals who led the department's “Hack the Pentagon” events and have conducted a few assessments of F-35 software. That starts with a meeting today between Lord, Boleng and a Defense Innovation Board group centered on software acquisition, which has been embedded both with the joint program office and Lockheed Martin, Lord said. https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2018/04/13/pentagon-creates-new-position-to-help-guide-software-acqusition-f-35-development/

  • Le financement de l’Espagne fait (enfin) décoller le programme de drone militaire européen

    1 février 2022 | International, Aérospatial

    Le financement de l’Espagne fait (enfin) décoller le programme de drone militaire européen

    L'Espagne s'engage à verser une contribution de 1,75 milliard d'euros au programme Eurodrone cofinancé avec l'Allemagne, la France et l'Italie....-aero-spatial

Toutes les nouvelles