24 mai 2023 | International, C4ISR
Northrop missile-warning satellites pass early design review
The Space Force plans to award a production contract in mid-2024 and the company is on track to launch the first satellite in 2028.
9 juillet 2022 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre
Les industriels de la Défense s’organisent pour produire plus vite
L'Etat, par la voix du Président de la République, ou celle du ministre des Armées, intimant aux acteurs industriels de la Défense d'accélérer leurs cadences de production, ceux-ci s'organisent pour apporter une réponse adéquate. Un exemple de ces délais jugés trop long, la production d'un radar militaire standard, une fois la commande passée, les pièces des sous-traitants réceptionnées, dure entre 24 et 36 mois, hors pénurie de matières. Au sein de la filière, donneurs d'ordre et sous-traitants planchent en toute discrétion pour proposer au ministre des Armées, Sébastien Lecornu, des leviers d'action applicables à court terme, en s'inspirant des méthodes de l'aéronautique civile. Une réflexion a lieu pour avoir des doubles sources sur certains composants, la norme dans le civil mais pas dans le militaire, et pour passer d'une logique de production à la commande, comme c'est le cas aujourd'hui, à une stratégie de flux. C'est une stratégie qui a aussi ses limites, le stockage de pièces ayant un coût significatif. Ainsi, une partie de la réponse se trouve du côté de l'industrie, mais l'autre est au niveau du ministère des Armées et de la Direction Générale de l'Armement (DGA). Les clients eux-mêmes vont sans doute devoir accepter de revoir les règles actuelles. Les tests pouvant durer 6 mois sur certains équipements, si les délais étaient revus à la baisse, il faudrait accepter un niveau de dysfonctionnements supérieur à la normale.
Sur le même sujet
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2 mai 2022 | International, Terrestre
Chile buys light armored vehicles from New Zealand in $20M deal
Up to 40 vehicles are needed in the long term, and could come from either from New Zealand or other countries where they're available, according to military sources in Chile.
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29 octobre 2018 | International, C4ISR
Microsoft, Amazon pledge to work with Pentagon following anonymous online rebukes
By Aaron Gregg Microsoft executives launched a spirited defense of their work with the U.S. military on Friday in a blog post written by company president Brad Smith, who pledged to work with Pentagon as it embarks on a multibillion-dollar effort to build advanced artificial intelligence capabilities into its operations. Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos offered a similar statement last week at a conference in San Francisco hosted by Wired Magazine. “If big tech companies are going to turn their back on the Department of Defense, this country is going to be in trouble,” Bezos said at the conference. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.) The two companies are responding to a broader wave of discontent that has complicated the efforts of Silicon Valley tech companies to work with the military. Search giant Google recently announced it would disallow its advanced algorithms to be used in weapons systems, and separately said it would decline to bid on a $10 billion opportunity to build the Pentagon's departmentwide cloud computing infrastructure. That contract, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or “JEDI” for short, is designed to give the Pentagon access to new weapons capabilities that are enabled by artificial intelligence and cloud computing. Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and Oracle submitted bids by the Oct. 12 deadline, company spokespeople confirmed this week, and the Defense Department is expected to award a contract next year. Amazon is seen as a front-runner because of its earlier work handling classified data for the CIA. The retorts by the executives followed a pair of anonymously written posts on the website Medium over the past month — both of which the site said had been verified by its editorial staff — in which self-described employees of Amazon and Microsoft raised concerns over the tech companies' relationship with the Defense Department. The Post could not independently verify the authenticity of the two Medium posts. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company could not verify the Medium post's authenticity, and an Amazon spokesman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. In a blog post titled “Technology and the U.S. military” that was published Friday on Microsoft's website, Smith wrote that the company would continue to work with the U.S. military while looking for ways to ensure its technology is used responsibly. “To withdraw from this market is to reduce our opportunity to engage in the public debate about how new technologies can best be used in a responsible way,” Smith wrote. "We are not going to withdraw from the future.” Full article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/26/microsoft-amazon-pledge-work-with-pentagon-following-anonymous-online-rebukes