L'Australie crée une agence de défense spatiale

Sur le même sujet

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  25 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  US Army awards air-launched effects contracts for future helicopters

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has awarded 10 contracts worth a total of $29.75 million to companies to provide mature technologies in the realm of air-launched effects, or ALE, for future vertical lift aircraft that are expected to come online around 2030, service aviation officials have told Defense News. Raytheon, Alliant Techsystems Operations of Northridge, California, and Area-I of Marietta, Georgia, were awarded contracts to develop air vehicles. L3 Technologies, Rockwell Collins and Aurora Flight Services Corporation were awarded contracts to provide mission systems. And Raytheon, Leonardo Electronics US Inc., Technology Service Corporation of Huntsville, Alabama, and Alliant Techsystems Operations LLC of Northridge, California, received contracts to provide ALE payloads. Through ALE, the Army hopes to provide current and future vertical lift fleets with “the eyes and ears” to penetrate enemy territory while manned aircraft are able to maintain standoff out of range of enemy attack, Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the Army's FVL modernization efforts, said in an exclusive interview with Defense News. “To do that, that has a whole host of capabilities embedded in it, and I would say it's not just the eyes and ears, but it's also, what we are finding, is the mouth, so our ability to communicate by bringing mesh network capabilities, by bringing an ability to hear in the electronic spectrum, and, again, the ability to collect in that spectrum so we can find, fix and finish on pacing threats,” he added. The Army plans to take these already technically mature capabilities through additional technology maturation, Col. Scott Anderson, the unmanned aircraft systems project manager for the Army's Program Executive Office for Aviation, said in the same interview. “We're looking for high technology readiness levels, so best of breed,” he said, “that we can buy and then we don't have to develop, spend a lot of developmental dollars getting ready to get out the door in a prototype.” The air vehicle, payloads and missions systems will all fit into a government-owned architecture by fiscal 2024. The service will first look at each major component of ALE individually, rather than as a whole system, to assess readiness, Anderson said. That will run through most of 2021. Then in 2022, the Army will take those capabilities and bring them together into a full system prototype working with Georgia Tech, which is helping the service write the underpinnings of the reference architecture, he added. In the final phase, the Army will integrate the system onto a platform, first targeting the Gray Eagle and AH-64 Apache attack helicopter. Ultimately the ALE capabilities to come out of the effort will be targeted for the Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) ecosystem, Anderson said. The Army is planning to field both FARA and a Future Long-Range Attack Aircraft (FLRAA) in the early 2030s. “We want to mature the [ALE] ecosystem and then have it ready to hand off to FARA in full bloom,” Rugen added. The Army has been looking at ALE since roughly late 2017, Rugen said, and has been working to refine the associated capabilities development documents for several years. Army Futures Command Commander Gen. Mike Murray signed an abbreviated capabilities development document in May. The service has been pleased with what it has seen so far in live prototype experimentation and physics-based modeling within the science and technology community and is prepared to move quickly on the effort, Rugen said. The Army selected Area-I's ALTIUS, the Air-Launched, Tube-Integrated Unmanned System, to launch from a rotary-wing test aircraft — a UH-60 Black Hawk — and was able to demonstrate the concept from a high altitude in August 2018. Then the service demonstrated the concept again during a ground robotic breach exercise at Yakima Air Base in Washington state in 2019 as well as a launch from a Black Hawk flying at a lower altitude — roughly 100 feet or less. In March, at Yuma Proving Ground, Arizona, the Army demonstrated multiple ALEs launched from a Black Hawk at very low altitudes to “maintain masking,” Rugen said. “We got our mesh network extended out to about 60 kilometers, so we were pretty happy with, again, the requirements pace and the experimentation pace with that.” The program will evolve beyond 2024 as the capability will align more closely with fitting into future formations. The Army could award future contracts to integrate the capability or could establish follow-on Other Transaction Authority contracts — which is the type of contract mechanism used for the 10 awardees that allows the Army to move faster to rapidly prototype. “We have the contractual mechanisms” to be “flexible and responsive,” which is key in a program like ALE, Joe Giunta, executive director of Army Contracting Command at Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, said. Instead of looking for a vendor that could deliver every aspect of a system, “we can harvest from across multiple different vendors, who bring, if you will, the best characteristics,” Patrick Mason, the deputy PEO for Army Aviation, added. “Then as they merge into our government reference architecture and our open system approach, we are then able to bring those together to create a much more capable product,” he said, that “fits into the longer term on how we can modify that as technology comes along and we can ramp on increases in technologies as we get out into the '23, '24 time frame and then further into the future as we look out to FY30 and the fielding of FARA, FLRAA and the full establishment of the FVL ecosystem.” The Army released a notice to industry Aug. 12 looking for input on technology that could further advance the capability of ALE against sophisticated adversaries with plans to host an industry day in September. While the service will prototype mature technologies in the near term, Mason said, “when you look at the '25 and '26 time frame, there will be better technologies that are developed around the payload side of the house, advancements in air vehicles or advancements in the missions systems.” The RFI is “looking at the next increment that is out there as we move from now in 2020 to what we would have as a residual capability in '24 to what we could move to in 2030,” Mason said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/08/24/army-awards-air-launched-effects-contracts-for-future-helicopters/

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  7 janvier 2022 | International, Aérospatial

  Lockheed to Produce 105 Additional F-35 Fighters for US Military

  Lockheed Martin has received an $847 million order to produce more than 100 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the US military.

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  25 novembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Four factors to consider in keeping NATO relevant

  By: Hans Binnendijk and Daniel S. Hamilton The NATO alliance survived four years of U.S. President Donald Trump due largely to strong congressional support and clever leadership by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. After the bell ringing and fireworks end in European capitals to welcome President-elect Joe Biden, the alliance will need to realize that it can not go back to business as usual. The world has moved on during those four years and the alliance will need to continue to rejuvenate in order to remain relevant. That rejuvenation process will be enshrined in a new Strategic Concept, which should emerge over the next year or so. Stoltenberg already has a so-called reflection process underway designed to identify key areas where change is needed. Biden's foreign policy team will now weigh in. NATO's rejuvenation might unfold under what we call the “Four Cs.” We should want an alliance that is more coherent, more capable, more comprehensive in scope and with a more co-equal balance of contributions to the common defense. The return of Joe Biden alone will contribute to NATO's coherence, and reverse poisonous trans-Atlantic political relations. But the problem is deeper. Threat perceptions differ markedly across the alliance. There is broad lack of confidence in commitments to the North Atlantic Treaty, including its mutual defense Article V. There is democratic backsliding among several NATO members. Allies are facing off against each other in the Eastern Mediterranean. There are differing attitudes about Russian behavior around the Black and Baltic sea. There are differences about the endgame in Afghanistan. And there are uncertainties of how the alliance should address China's growing security role in Europe and the global commons. The new Strategic Concept will need to enhance coherence by reaffirming common democratic values and recommitting to the common defense. This will be the most important element of a new Strategic Concept. A review of the Strategic Concept can provide a process through which allies can assess mechanisms to uphold their mutual commitment to strengthen their free institutions, avoid straying from agreed democratic practices and prevent allies from confronting each other militarily. Second, the alliance needs to continue its efforts to strengthen its capabilities in two distinct areas: conventional military might and resilience against so-called hybrid or non-kinetic attacks. Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, NATO nations have begun to focus again on a major power competitor. Four NATO battlegroups are forward-deployed to the Baltic states and Poland. A small, very high-readiness force and a larger readiness initiative were undertaken to back up those battalions. A mobilization initiative was designed to make sure ready forces can forward-deploy quickly. But European defense budgets constrained by COVID-19 will put those initiatives in jeopardy. The Strategic Concept will need to prioritize those programs. The alliance must also more methodically address unconventional challenges to human security from Russia such as media disinformation, corrosive cyber operations, supply chain disruptions and energy intimidation. The Strategic Concept needs to design resilience programs so that alliance members can better protect the critical functions of our societies to such disruptive dangers. Next, the scope of NATO's mission needs to be more comprehensive. NATO's core tasks of collective defense, crisis management and cooperative security must be expanded to include countering challenges that contribute to global instability. Those challenges would range from managing global warming and pandemics through the refugee crisis to the rise of China. NATO has recently used its mobility and civil defense assets to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. NATO navies have contributed to saving the lives of refugees at sea. In addition, the consequences of a major ice melt will have a significant security impact in the Arctic, along urban coastlines and on further refugee flows. To remain relevant, NATO must begin to define its role in these areas. Stoltenberg has focused the alliance's attention on China. That nation is increasingly partnering with Russia in the military arena including defense industrial cooperation and joint exercises. It also has invested in European strategic infrastructure, created technology dependencies and used coercive diplomacy to stifle European voices. NATO's expanded role should include reducing those dependencies and developing much closer partnership ties with America's Asian allies. Finally, the new Strategic Concept should result in more co-equal trans-Atlantic distribution of military capabilities and responsibilities. This is less about traditional burden-sharing than it is about responding to two historical trends. Europe's response to the Trump years has been to seek greater strategic autonomy. China's military challenge has American planners focusing on Asia first. Many American friends of Europe are discussing a possible new division of labor, with the United States focusing more on China and European militaries focusing on Russia. This, however, could leave Europe poorly defended and open to coercion. The Strategic Concept will need to divine an elegant solution, perhaps with Europe accepting the responsibility to provide half of the capability needed to defend against a major Russian attack. NATO has remained history's strongest alliance precisely because it has adapted to new strategic conditions. It can do so again. Hans Binnendijk is a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council and formerly served as the U.S. National Security Council's senior director for defense policy. Daniel S. Hamilton is an Austrian Marshall Plan distinguished fellow and the director of the Global Europe Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/11/24/four-factors-to-consider-in-keeping-nato-relevant/