19 mai 2021 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

La pépite Fichou rachetée par le groupe français HEF

La pépite militaire Fichou, spécialiste de l'optique de précision, basée à Fresnes, a été acquise mardi 18 mai par le groupe français HEF (Loire), acteur de l'ingénierie des surfaces. Fichou est un industriel crucial de la base industrielle et technologique de défense (BITD) française, souligne la revue Challenges. Il produit des composants optiques de haute précision, essentiels pour les avions de combat Rafale et les satellites militaires, notamment. « Fichou détient une expertise clé pour l'optique de précision, une technologie décisive pour nos avions et nos satellites », indiquait Florence Parly, en visite sur le site de Fresnes en juillet 2018, évoquant une « vitrine du savoir-faire et de l'excellence industrielle de notre pays ».

Challenges et Les Echos du 19 mai

Sur le même sujet

  • Army Eyeing Navy's High-Powered Laser to Fight Enemy Drone Swarms

    19 juillet 2019 | International, Terrestre, Autre défense

    Army Eyeing Navy's High-Powered Laser to Fight Enemy Drone Swarms

    By Matthew Cox Army modernization officials are getting help from the Navy to make the service's High Energy Laser program more than twice as powerful for fending off aerial attacks from swarms of enemy drones. Currently, the Army's High Energy Laser Tactical Vehicle Demonstrator (HEL TVD) features a 100-kilowatt laser designed to fit on Family of Medium Tactical Vehicle (FMTV) trucks. The service plans to conduct a demonstrationof the system's target acquisition, tracking and other capabilities against a range of targets in 2022. Meanwhile, the Army's Rapid Capabilities Office plans to take advantage of the Navy's 250-kilowatt laser program, a system that could be adapted to fit on the FMTV platform, Army Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski told an audience Tuesday at an Association of the United States Army Institute of Land Warfare breakfast. "The intent is to work with the Navy, and we are doing that right now, in order to increase the power of that laser system from beyond 100-kilowatt up to maybe the 250-kilowatt mark," said Ostrowski, the military deputy to the assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. The Army's 100-kilowatt HEL TVD is being designed to provide air and missile support to forward operating bases and airfields, Ostrowski said. The service also plans to field a platoon of four 50-kilowatt lasers, known as Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) that will be mounted on a Stryker combat vehicle in fiscal 2022. The advantage of the laser is having an "unlimited magazine" for unmanned aerial systems, as well as rockets, artillery and mortars, instead of "shooting $100,000 missiles at $7,000" unmanned aerial systems, Ostrowski said, adding that the Army hopes to expand the potential use of lasers on the battlefield beyond air defense. "We want to be able to put that capability on our tanks to potentially get after targets that our combat vehicles can go after, so this is just the beginning ... of where we see lasers going in the future," he said. One of the challenges of working with lasers, Ostrowski said, is controlling the heat buildup generated by the power source. "It's not just the ability to create the energy to fire the laser, but it's also to dissipate the heat," he said. It's still uncertain whether the Navy's 250-kilowatt laser program will work for the Army, but "we are not going to ignore" its potential for dealing with more complex enemy air attacks, Ostrowski said. "The power piece is extremely important. If you don't have the power, you don't have that unlimited magazine, and that unlimited magazine makes a difference in a swarm environment where you have multiple targets and you have to be able to ... recharge quickly and be able to shoot them all down," he said. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/07/16/army-eyeing-navys-high-powered-laser-fight-enemy-drone-swarms.html

  • Here are some new tools coming to protect the supply chain

    13 novembre 2019 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité

    Here are some new tools coming to protect the supply chain

    By: Andrew Eversden The Department of Defense is working with a unnamed company to mitigate cybersecurity vulnerability discovered in a technology used by the Pentagon, the DoD's Deputy Chief CIO Michele Iversen said Nov. 12. Without going into specific detail, Iversen said the department is working to remove the product. “The company was compromised [and] had a big cybersecurity vulnerability,” said Iversen, speaking at Fifth Domain's annual CyberCon conference. “And we have seen bad things coming from those products, so we are looking at how to use our authorities ... [to] block those products or companies for national security systems.” This highlights a broader issue facing the DoD: how to protect its supply chain. To mitigate supply chain risk, Iversen said that she is working on a supply chain illumination tools. She said that these are useful because its made up of publicly available information that doesn't need any level of classification. Specifically, she said she's working on a decision support tool where she can expose a “bare minimum set of publicly available supply chain information.” “So when people are going to look and make their purchases, they have information available to them,” she said. She said, ultimately, she wants the DoD CIO's office to offer that tool as a service. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is also starting to develop cybersecurity tools. NIST's Jon Boyens, acting deputy chief of the computer security division, said that his team at the standards agency is working on a supplier inter-dependency tool “to look at different suppliers and their criticality” to allow for government to be more effective in asking for capabilities during the procurement process. “Industry is saying, ‘You know, we've invested in this but we're not getting any incentives' ... and so they're kind of looking for incentives for investing in technology,” said Boyens. Iversen said that technology research and development also presents its own attack surface with which it needs to grapple. If the research and development was done in a foreign country, that presents a unique set of threats. For example, Iversen pointed to back-up software being placed into a nuclear command-and-control system. “Maybe you just say anything where the R&D ... [is] done in those countries is just off limits,” Iversen said. “It just makes common sense. It's fixing stupid.” https://www.fifthdomain.com/smr/cybercon/2019/11/12/here-are-some-new-tools-coming-to-protect-the-supply-chain/

  • DARPA takes big step forward on X-plane that maneuvers with air bursts

    19 janvier 2023 | International, Aérospatial

    DARPA takes big step forward on X-plane that maneuvers with air bursts

    "We’re not actually pushing the vehicle with air, we’re using it to tailor how the air is flowing over the wing,” the former CRANE program manager said.

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