14 janvier 2020 | International, Aérospatial
By: Agnes Helou
BEIRUT — The Lebanese Air Force has refurbished an Agusta-Bell AB 212 helicopter as part of a proof of concept, and will now begin a five-year project to revive the fleet with five operational helicopters.
“The twin engine choppers have been out of service since 1990. We are bringing them back to service to perform [multiple] tasks, from military missions to firefighting missions and search and rescue,” Brig. Gen. Ziad Haykal, the commander of the Air Force, told Defense News.
Due to the similarity between the AB 212 and the Huey II, which is currently operational with the fleet, the Air Force can use spare parts and technical expertise gained from the latter helicopter for local refurbishment, the general added.
Indeed, local refurbishment will reduce the cost of the project by 60 percent because the service is not sending the helicopters back to the manufacturer.
“The expected operational life span of the helicopters is 20 years, and it is worth noting that we obtained technical references for the project from Leonardo company, the manufacturer of this type of choppers,” Haykal said. “We are anticipating to operate these twin-engined helicopters in the missions to help secure oil and gas installations above Lebanese waters, particularly security preservation of the exclusive economic zone, by air or by sea.”
The five helicopters are expected to be equipped with 70mm Hydra rockets, .50-caliber machine guns and 250-kilogram bombs, much like the Huey II during missions at the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp in 2007, a Lebanese official told Defense News on a condition of anonymity. Fatah al-Islam militant launched at attack on the Lebanese Army from the Palestinian refugee camp in North Lebanon in May 2007. The Army struck back with modified Huey helicopters that were able to deploy 250-kilogram bombs.
The Hydra rockets and their integration on the helos are part of American military aid to Lebanon, the official said.
The head of Lebanon's military, Gen. Joseph Aoun, oversaw the refurbishment project, which was launched at Beirut Air Base.
3 juin 2021 | International, Naval
The Marine Corps says additional funding in fiscal 2022 could support four key areas of investment that will set up the service for success in a fight against a peer adversary like China.
23 avril 2019 | International, Terrestre
By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army plans to take another year to pick an Active Protection System for its Stryker combat vehicle, according to the military deputy to the Army acquisition chief. The service is already fielding the Rafael-made Trophy APS on its Abrams tank and has picked IMI's Iron Fist for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle — both as interim systems until the Army can develop an advanced future system — but it had to go back to square one when its attempt to outfit Stryker with Herndon, Virginia-based Artis LLC's Iron Curtain system failed. The Army put out a request for possible systems to be qualified as an interim solution on the Stryker. Officials ultimately chose a Rafael and DRS team and a Rheinmetall and UBT team to participate in a live-fire rodeo last November to see if either system might work. But while it was believed a decision would come soon after, Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski testified at an April 2 Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee hearing that it would take another year to make a decision. “We have two companies that are in the process of competing for [APS on Stryker]. One is a venture between ... Rafael and DRS and the other is Rheinmetall and UBT, so we are in the process of going through that,” Ostrowski said. “It's going to take about a year, quite frankly, in order to put those systems on the vehicles, characterize them and make a determination as to whether or not to move forward with either one of the two vendors.” Ostrowski added the service had asked each team to provide blueprints and to build their non-developmental APS systems to fit on Stryker. “They are in the process of doing that build,” he said. “And once the build is put on the vehicle, it's then a matter of testing in order to ensure that it works,” Ostrowski said, which is not unlike the process the Army went through to characterize and qualify APS systems on both Abrams and Bradley. Israeli company Rafael and DRS submitted its Trophy VPS — a lighter version of Trophy — for the rodeo. Germany-based Rheinmetall partnered with Unified Business Technologies, based in Michigan, and submitted its Active Defense System — now renamed StrikeShield. During the rodeo, participants did not perform a full installation of their systems on the vehicle. Instead, they set up test rigs in front of Strykers or hung their system off a Stryker in the evaluation. Following the rodeo, the idea was to select one, possibly two systems, to begin some sort of installation characterization on a platform deemed most appropriate for the APS system, Col. Glenn Dean, the Army's Stryker program manager who is also in charge of the interim APS effort, told Defense News in October 2018. Meanwhile, Ostrowski said the Army bought 88 Iron Fist systems for Bradley in 2019 and planned to buy another 36 in the FY20 budget. The service is on a path to field four brigades of Abrams with Trophy by FY21. The Army is also developing its own Modular Active Protection System, which is seen more like a digital integrated backbone that will be designed with an open-system architecture so that vendors can bring radars, optical sensors and hard- or soft-kill effectors and plug them in, according to Ostrowski. The important thing is “to get a capability out there first. . . . Now it's just a matter of moving beyond that,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/04/02/us-army-needs-another-year-to-pick-protection-system-for-stryker/
25 août 2022 | International, Aérospatial
New Mexico-made quantum dots will soon be generating solar electricity at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota under a $750,000 contract awarded to local startup Ubiquitous Quantum Dots.