7 août 2019 | International, Aérospatial

Les nouveaux systèmes de défense sol-air de l'armée bientôt testés

L'armée suisse va démarrer prochainement les essais des systèmes radar destinés à renouveler sa défense sol-air de longue portée. Deux systèmes sont dans la course: le Patriot de la société américaine Raytheon et le SAMP/T du consortium français Eurosam.

L'achat de ces systèmes est lié au programme d'acquisition des nouveaux avions de combat. Les essais auront lieu sur l'ancienne place d'exercice de Menzingen dans le canton de Zoug, a indiqué mercredi le Département fédéral de la défense (DDPS).

Les détecteurs du Patriot seront testés du 19 au 30 août et ceux du SAMP/T du 16 au 27 septembre. Au total, dix missions spécifiques seront réalisées pour évaluer les aspects techniques et opérationnels de ces appareils. Il s'agira d'effectuer des mesures au sol et de sonder l'espace aérien à la recherche d'avions des Forces aériennes.

Pas d'essais de tir

Les deux candidats accompliront le même programme d'essai afin d'assurer l'égalité de traitement, a expliqué Marc Dürr, de l'Office fédéral de l'armement armasuisse, responsable des essais. Aucun essai n'aura lieu les jours fériés ou le week-end. Et il n'y aura pas de tir.

Les tests ont lieu en Suisse car la topographie a une influence sur les détecteurs, a ajouté M. Dürr. La situation n'est pas la même dans le massif alpin ou dans une zone côtière. Le choix se portera sur un modèle qui sera utilisé tel quel et qui ne nécessitera pas d'adaptations pour la Suisse.

Les résultats de chaque candidat seront ensuite comparés. Suivra alors un deuxième appel d'offres comme pour le nouvel avion de combat. Le Conseil fédéral tranchera à fin 2020 ou début 2021 sur la base des évaluations et des rapports des experts de l'armée.

Huit milliards au total

La surface à couvrir par la défense sol-air doit être de 15'000 km2 au moins. Le système doit atteindre une altitude d'engagement de plus de 12'000 m et une portée supérieure à 50 km. Il n'est pas nécessaire de disposer d'une capacité de défense contre des missiles balistiques.

L'achat d'un système de défense sol-air se fera dans le cadre des programmes d'armement ordinaires. L'acquisition des avions de combat sera en revanche soumise au vote, probablement en septembre ou novembre 2020.

La facture totale ne devait pas dépasser 8 milliards de francs. L'arrêté de planification doit comporter un volume de financement maximal pour les avions de 6 milliards, le reste étant dévolu à la défense sol-air. L'achat des avions et du système de défense sol-air sera coordonné sur le plan technique et du point de vue du calendrier.

Quatre avions en lice

Quatre jets ont été évalués entre avril et juin à Payerne pour remplacer les Tiger et les F/A-18 de l'armée. Le français Rafale (Dassault), l'européen Eurofighter (Airbus) et les deux avions américains: le successeur du FA-18, le Super Hornet de Boeing, et le F-35A de Lockheed-Martin. Le suédois Saab a retiré le Gripen E de l'évaluation.

Les deux derniers projets d'achats de jets avaient été marqués par un scrutin populaire. L'acquisition de F/A-18 avait été rendue possible après l'échec en 1993 de l'initiative populaire s'y opposant. L'achat de Gripen a été rejeté en 2014 après un référendum contre le fonds qui aurait dû être mis sur pied pour le financer.

https://www.rtn.ch/rtn/Actualite/economie/Les-nouveaux-systemes-de-defense-sol-air-de-l-armee-bientot-testes.html

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  • The Pentagon is eyeing a 500-ship Navy, documents reveal

    28 septembre 2020 | International, Naval

    The Pentagon is eyeing a 500-ship Navy, documents reveal

    David B. Larter and Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON — The Pentagon's upcoming recommendation for a future Navy is expected to call for a significant increase in the number of ships, with officials discussing a fleet as large as 530 hulls, according to documents obtained by Defense News. Supporting documents to the forthcoming Future Navy Force Study reviewed by Defense News show the Navy moving towards a lighter force with many more ships but fewer aircraft carriers and large surface combatants. Instead, the fleet would include more small surface combatants, unmanned ships and submarines and an expanded logistics force. Two groups commissioned by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to design what a future Navy should look like suggested fleets of anywhere from 480 to 534 ships, when manned and unmanned platforms are accounted for — at least a 35 percent increase in fleet size from the current target of 355 manned ships by 2030. The numbers all come from an April draft of inputs to the Future Navy Force Study conducted by the Office of the Secretary of Defense. While the number will likely have changed somewhat in final recommendations recently sent to Esper, the plans being discussed in April are notable as they reflect what will likely be major shift in the Navy's future — and the expectation is that a larger-than-planned Navy based on the concepts laid out in the documents will remain intact in the final analysis. Esper himself hinted at that in comments last week. In a speech delivered at the think tank Rand, the secretary called for a Navy of “over 350 ships,” specifically by increasing the Navy's shipbuilding funding account. “In short, it will be a balanced force of over 350 ships — both manned and unmanned — and will be built in a relevant time frame and budget-informed manner,” he said. Indeed, the fleet compositions presented in the inputs broadly reflect the concept of a lighter fleet more reliant on unmanned or lightly crewed vessels that Esper described to Defense News in a February interview. “One of the ways you get [to a larger fleet] quickly is moving toward lightly manned [ships], which over time can be unmanned,” Esper said then. “We can go with lightly manned ships, get them out there. You can build them so they're optionally manned and then, depending on the scenario or the technology, at some point in time they can go unmanned.” The Future Naval Force Study, overseen by Deputy Secretary of Defense David Norquist, kicked off in January after Esper decided he wanted an outside take on the Navy's self-review of its future force structure. The OSD-led review tasked three groups to provide their version of an ideal fleet construction for the year 2045, one each by the Pentagon's Cost Assessment & Program Evaluation office, the Joint Staff, the Navy and a group from the Hudson Institute. Those fleets were war-gamed and the results were compiled into the Future Naval Force Study, which was briefed to Esper earlier this month. Ultimately, the Navy is using the feedback from the study to create their shipbuilding plan and fiscal 2022 budget request, the service said in a statement. “The Future Naval Force Study is a collaborative OSD, Joint Staff and Department of the Navy effort to assess future naval force structure options and inform future naval force structure decisions and the 30-year shipbuilding plan,” said Navy spokesman Lt. Tim Pietrack. “Although COVID-19 has delayed some portions of the study, the effort remains on track to be complete in late 2020 and provide analytic insights in time to inform Program Budget Review 22.” The April documents viewed by Defense News included notional fleets designed by CAPE and the Hudson Institute. Defense News did not have access to the Navy's inputs into the FNFS. Neither fleet reviewed by Defense News, nor the fleet developed by the Navy, will be the final composition reflected in the FNFS. The numbers, however, provide a glimpse of the radically different future fleet likely to be reflected in the final analysis expected later this year. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2020/09/24/the-pentagon-is-eyeing-a-500-ship-navy-documents-reveal/

  • The Pentagon has cut the number of serious F-35 technical flaws in half

    24 avril 2020 | International, Aérospatial

    The Pentagon has cut the number of serious F-35 technical flaws in half

    By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The U.S. Defense Department is slowly but surely whittling down the number of F-35 technical problems, with the fighter jet program's most serious issues decreasing from 13 to seven over the past year. In June 2019, Defense News published an investigation delving into the details of 13 previously unreported category 1 deficiencies — the designation given to major flaws that impact safety or mission effectiveness. Following the report, five of those 13 category 1 problems have been “closed,” meaning they were eliminated or sufficiently corrected. Five were downgraded to a lower level of deficiency after actions were taken to help mitigate negative effects, and three issues remain open and unsolved, according to the F-35 program executive office. Four additional CAT 1 problems have also since been added to the list, raising the total CAT 1 deficiencies to seven. The program office declined to provide additional details about those issues for classification reasons, but stated that software updates should allow all of them to be closed by the end of 2020. “The F-35 Lightning II Joint Program Office is keenly aware of these existing F-35-related category 1 deficiencies and is focused on developing and implementing solutions for these issues as quickly as possible,” the program office said in response to questions from Defense News. “F-35 operator safety is the F-35 JPO's highest priority.” In a statement to Defense News, F-35 manufacturer Lockheed Martin confirmed the number of open category 1 deficiencies. However, the company declined to provide further information about the path to fix current issues or how earlier issues had been ameliorated. “We are actively addressing the deficiencies and expect all to be downgraded or closed this year,” the company said. While the overall reduction in deficiencies is a promising trend, it is also important to track how problems are solved and how quickly fixes are pushed to the rest of the fleet, said Dan Grazier, an analyst with the independent watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. “I'm not surprised that they are continuing to find issues. This is why we are supposed to be testing weapon systems before we buy a whole bunch of them. I am a little surprised that we are finding CAT 1 deficiencies at this point during operational testing,” Grazier said. “I think that speaks to the level of complexity with this program that it's taken us this long to get to this point, and even after all the testing that has been done and the time and money that has gone into this that we're still finding category 1 issues," he added. "It shows that the program wasn't born in the right place. It was way too ambitious from the very beginning.” Aside from four classified problems, there remain three open category 1 deficiencies in need of a fix. There are myriad reasons for that, the program office stated. “Reasons for delayed issue closure vary according to the complexity of the solution and the availability of test assets needed to verify the solution,” the JPO said. “The U.S. services fund the F-35 program to address a prioritized set of DRs [deficiency reports], while at the same time, develop new capabilities. It is likely that some low-priority DRs will never be resolved because of their minor impact on F-35 fleet operations does not justify the cost of resolution." The F-35 program office provided some details on the path forward for resolving these technical flaws, but noted that many details regarding those plans remain classified: Spikes in the F-35 cockpit's cabin pressure have been known to cause barotrauma, or extreme ear and sinus pain. This problem was documented when two Air Force pilots, flying older versions of the F-35A conventional-takeoff-and-landing model, experienced ear and sinus pain that they described as “excruciating, causing loss of in-flight situational awareness, with effects lasting for months,” according to documents obtained by Defense News. The physiological event is known by the medical term barotrauma. The F-35 Joint Program Office believes barotrauma in the jet is caused when sensors on the outer mold line of the aircraft detect “rapidly changing static pressures” that, in turn, drive very quick changes of the cockpit pressure regulator valve. Lockheed Martin has tested a fix that proved to be successful in a laboratory setting, Lockheed program head Greg Ulmer said last year. But flight testing of that improvement has not occurred, slowing the pace of a solution. The F-35 program office now says flight testing of a new cockpit pressure regulation system is planned for mid-2020. If all goes well, the deficiency should be completely eliminated in 2021. On nights with little starlight, the night vision camera sometimes displays green striations that make it difficult for all F-35 variants to see the horizon or to land on ships. On nights where there is little ambient light, horizontal green lines sometimes appear on the night vision camera feed, obscuring the horizon and making landing on a ship more dangerous. The problem is different than the notorious “green glow” issue, caused when the F-35 helmet-mounted display's LED lights produce a greenish luminescence that inhibits a pilot's ability to land on an aircraft carrier on nights with very little light. At one point, both Lockheed and the government's program office believed both problems could be solved by the F-35 Generation III helmet that the U.S. military began fielding last year. Although the program office no longer considers the “green glow” problem a deficiency, it appears that the new helmet did not completely solve the night vision camera issue. The program office told Defense News that it intends to develop software improvements and test them in flight later this year, but the deficiency will not be considered “closed” until at least 2021. The sea search mode of the F-35's radar only illuminates a small slice of the sea's surface. Unlike the other problems, which are the result of the contractor not meeting technical specifications or the jet not working as planned, this deficiency is on the books even though the jet's Northrop Grumman-made AN/APG-81 active electronically scanned array radar fulfills its requirements. Currently, the radar can only illuminate what is directly in front of it when in sea search mode. That performance is not good enough for the Navy, which wants to be able to search a wider area than is currently possible. Although this problem can be fixed with software modifications and an upgrade to the radar's processing power, it will continue to be on the books for some time. According to the program office, “[the] U.S. services agreed to plan for an improved radar mode, which will require the Technology Refresh-1 avionics update, for software release in [calendar year] 2024.” ‘A line in the sand' Although Defense Department and military leaders have criticized the F-35 program for high operations and sustainment costs, the operational community has rallied around the performance of the jet, praising its advanced computing capability that allows the aircraft to mesh together data from different sensors and provide a more complete picture of enemy threats. Brig. Gen. David Abba, who leads the Air Force's F-35 integration office, said in March that he was comfortable with the path forward to correct open deficiencies, downplaying the impact of those issues on daily operations. “Is it important to hold folks' feet to the fire and make sure that we're delivering on the capabilities that we need? Yes,” he said. But, he added, it's also difficult to balance the need to meet a stated technical requirement against the reality of a fielded technology that may already be performing well in daily operations. “That's the crux of the acquisition and the delivery problem that we have,” Abba said. “When we say ‘I need this to work exactly like this,' I'm drawing a line in the sand. If I'm a half degree on one side of that line versus the other, is it really that different? That's where the art comes in.” “We've got to kind of get over ourselves a little bit and acknowledge that we never field perfect weapon systems,” he continued. “I don't want to diminish the fact that it's critical that we get after open DRs, but every weapon system in the United States Air Force — and frankly around the planet — has open deficiencies. What matters is the severity of those deficiencies and ensuring that we have a robust process between government and industry to triage those and deal with them appropriately.” Aaron Mehta and David B. Larter contributed to this report. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/hidden-troubles-f35/2020/04/24/the-pentagon-has-cut-the-number-of-serious-f-35-technical-flaws-in-half/

  • Lockheed to make wings for F-16 jet in India with partner Tata

    5 septembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

    Lockheed to make wings for F-16 jet in India with partner Tata

    Neha Dasgupta NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) will build wings for its F-16 combat plane in India with its local partner, Tata Advanced Systems Limited, an executive at the U.S. company said on Tuesday. Lockheed is bidding for a contract - estimated at more than $15 billion - to supply the Indian air force with 114 combat planes, which must be all manufactured locally under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship Make in India program. However, Vivek Lall, vice president of strategy and business development at Lockheed, said the proposed Indian production of the F-16 wings would not be contingent upon the company winning the order for the planes. “Producing F-16 wings in India will strengthen Lockheed Martin' strategic partnership with Tata and support Make in India,” the company said in a statement. Modi has been pushing for local manufacturing that will provide jobs and also end the military's dependence on imports. Lockheed's announcement came just days ahead of top level talks between the United States and India aimed at expanding defense ties. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis will meet with Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj and Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Boeing (BA.N) has pitched its F/A-18 Super Hornet for the Indian contract as well as Sweden's Saab with its Gripen fighter. France's Dassault (AVMD.PA) Systemes SE's Rafale, the Eurofighter Typhoon and Russian aircraft are also in the fray. Lall said Lockheed had offered to make India its sole F-16 production facility that would supply the Indian military but also other countries. “If India buys the F-16 then it becomes the center of manufacturing for the global market,” he said. Lall said the company planned to begin production of the F-16 wings in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad from 2020. He said these were being produced at a facility in Israel and would not impact any jobs in the United States. The Israeli center will continue to be involved in other production, he said. “All F-16 wings globally are to be built in the Hyderabad facility,” he said. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-usa-lockheedmartin/lockheed-to-make-wings-for-f-16-jet-in-india-with-partner-tata-idUSKCN1LK17T

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