Lawmakers plan fast fixes for defense supply chain

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  23 octobre 2024 | International, Terrestre

  France's Thales reports higher nine-month sales and orders

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  29 octobre 2020 | International, Terrestre

  Boeing has another overrun on the KC-46, but its CEO says there’s reason for hope

  Valerie Insinna   WASHINGTON — Boeing reported another $67 million charge on the KC-46 tanker program in third-quarter earnings disclosed Oct. 28, capping off a difficult quarter defined by continued hardships on its commercial side. The increase in KC-46 costs was “due to continued COVID-19 disruptions and productivity inefficiencies,” Boeing's chief financial officer, Greg Smith, told investors during an earnings call. However, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun expressed confidence that the program would turn the corner in 2021 and become profitable for the company. “The tanker has been a drag on us for three or four years in every way you can think of with respect to investors,” he said. “But we are continuing to clear the hurdle with our customers with respect to its performance in their fleet and their need for that tanker. "That whole relationship, I believe, will begin to transition next year, and opposed to being a drag on our franchise — which it's been — I believe it will become a strength in our franchise.” Previous charges on the KC-46 program amount to about $4.7 billion — almost equal to the $4.9 billion sum of the company's firm fixed-price contract with the U.S. Air Force, which it signed in 2011. In July, a $151 million charge was attributed to the decline in commercial plane production driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. That slowdown has made it more expensive to produce commercial derivative planes like the KC-46, which is based on the Boeing 767 and made on the same production line in Everett, Washington. Overall, defense revenues slightly decreased to $6.8 billion “primarily due to derivative aircraft award timing,” the company said in a news release. But that impact paled in comparison to Boeing's commercial business, where revenues dropped from $8.2 billion in 2019 to $3.6 billion in 2020. As a result of those continued difficulties, the company plans to lay off an additional 7,000 workers by the end of 2021, Calhoun announced. At that point, Boeing's workforce will have been cut by almost 20 percent, down from 161,000 earlier this year to about 130,000 employees. Smith characterized 2020 has a “year of transition” for defense programs like the MQ-25, T-7 trainer and the Air Force One replacement, which are in development. Once those programs move into production, Boeing expects to see “modest growth,” he said. But Calhoun added that global defense spending is unlikely to greatly increase in the coming years, meaning that growth in Boeing's defense portfolio will be limited. “In fact, we believe there will be pressure on defense spending as a result of all the COVID-related spending that of course governments around the world have been experiencing,” he said. “I don't think we're looking at that world through rose-colored glasses. I expect real pressure on that market.” https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2020/10/28/boeing-has-another-overrun-on-the-kc-46-but-its-ceo-says-theres-some-reason-for-hope/

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  2 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  How we talk about China — and why it matters

  Murray Brewster · Reports of human rights violations are pushing trading countries like Canada into a corner In both war and diplomacy, language matters. And if one thing was evident from the flood of words coming out of the Halifax International Security Forum last weekend, it's that Western democracies, despite their vows to uphold human rights, have no common language to define their view of — and relationship with — China. The world is rapidly approaching a crossroads with Beijing, a point where nations will have to decide whether to treat the burgeoning superpower as a trading partner, a rival — or an active threat. Secret Chinese documents were released to media outlets recently which show how the Muslim minority Uighur population is being locked up in mass detention camps and subjected to "systematic brainwashing." Beijing's violent response to pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong revived grim memories of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. So is China a competitor or an adversary? 'Naive' about China's motives The answer to that question seems to depend on which country's leaders are answering it — how heavily Beijing has invested in their nations' markets, how badly their businesses want access to that vast Chinese market. "For many years, folks were naive about Chinese motivations," U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien told journalists during an on-the-record briefing in Halifax over the weekend. "In the past, the relationship with China was driven solely by trade, driven solely by economics." O'Brien describes China, rather antiseptically, as a "near-peer competitor," not as an adversary. Still, there were points during the briefing when O'Brien's language became decidedly adversarial — even dystopian — as he described the high-tech incarceration and forced re-education of as many as one million Uighurs. In the context of the dispute over allowing Chinese telecom giant Huawei into Western 5G wireless systems, O'Brien asked whether Western Europe would have allowed the Soviet Union into their countries to build railroads at the height of the Cold War. A new Cold War? On the record, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan also was not prepared to describe China as an adversary — but he was decidedly mushy when asked how we should describe it. The confusion on display in Halifax over the question of whether the West has arrived at the threshold of a new Cold War was widespread. U.S. Admiral Phillip Davidson, the commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, would not describe the current moment as "a new Cold War" but warned that the West needs to be prepared to continually "call out" China when it crosses internationally accepted lines. Many say some of those lines have been crossed already — through the arbitrary detention of the Uighurs (which China attempts to justify with the claim that it's fighting Islamic extremism) and through its program of constructing artificial islands in the South China Sea, which has been condemned by an international tribunal at the Hague. So, again ... rival or adversary? 'Feeding ... a monster' Lady Pauline Neville-Jones, a former top British diplomat and adviser to ex-U.K. prime minister David Cameron, said China has signalled it intends to become an "unequalled" high-tech nation. Beijing has said it's prepared to pour real money into achieving that goal — with Western nations supplying the world-class post secondary institutions that are training the next generation of Chinese engineers. "We are feeding something that could be a monster," she told the Halifax forum. "So what do we do about it? As long as we pursue our relations with China, largely separately on the basis of short-term national interest, I think we are giving away the game." It took Western allies several years to come with up a comprehensive Cold War strategy following the Second World War, she pointed out. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/china-u-s-sajjan-uighur-halifax-international-security-forum-1.5372856