17 décembre 2024 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR
The envisioned purchase will constitute the Lithuanian military's biggest-ever purchase, officials said, though no price tag was given.
17 octobre 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Airbus Chief Executive Guillaume Faury hit out at the German government for its strict line on arms exports in a newspaper interview published on Tuesday, with Berlin blocking the delivery of Eurofighter combat aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
20 juin 2018 | International, Terrestre
Jen Judson WASHINGTON — BAE Systems has won a contract to build the Marine Corps' new amphibious combat vehicle following a competitive evaluation period where BAE's vehicle was pitted against an offering from SAIC. The contract allows for the company to enter into low-rate initial production with 30 vehicles expected to be delivered by fall of 2019, valued at $198 million. The Marines plan to field 204 of the vehicles. The total value of the contract with all options exercised is expected to amount to about $1.2 billion. The awarding of the contract gets the Corps “one step closer to delivering this capability to the Marines,” John Garner, Program Executive Officer, Land Systems Marine Corps, said during a media round table held Tuesday. But the Corps isn't quite done refining its new ACV. The vehicle is expected to undergo incremental changes with added new requirements and modernization. The Corps is already working on the requirements for ACV 1.2, which will include a lethality upgrade for the amphibous vehicle. BAE's ACV vehicle will eventually replace the Corps' legacy amphibious vehicle, but through a phased approach. The Assault Amphibious Vehicle is currently undergoing survivability upgrades to keep the Cold War era vehicle ticking into 2035. BAE Systems and SAIC were both awarded roughly $100 million each in November 2015 to deliver 16 prototypes to the Marine Corps for evaluation in anticipation of a down select to one vendor in 2018. [BAE, SAIC Named as Finalists in Marines ACV Competition] All government testing of the prototypes concluded the first week of December 2017 and the Marine Corps issued its request for proposals the first week in January 2018. Operational tests also began concurrently. Government testing included land reliability testing, survivability and blast testing and water testing — both ship launch and recovery as well as surf transit. Operational evaluations included seven prototypes each from both SAIC and BAE Systems, six participated and one spare was kept for backup. BAE Systems' partnered with Italian company Iveco Defense Vehicles to build its ACV offering. [BAE Systems completes Amphibious Combat Vehicle shipboard testing] Some of the features BAE believed were particularly attractive for a new ACV is that it has space for 13 embarked Marines and a crew of three, which keeps the rifle squad together. The engine's strength is 690 horsepower over the old engine's 560 horsepower, and it runs extremely quietly. The vehicle has a V-shaped hull to protect against underbody blasts, and the seat structure is completely suspended. SAIC's vehicle, which was built in Charleston, South Carolina, offered improved traction through a central tire-inflation system to automatically increase or decrease tire pressure. It also had a V-hull certified during tests at the Nevada Automotive Test Center — where all prototypes were tested by the Marine Corps — and had blast-mitigating seats to protect occupants. The 3rd Assault Amphibian Battalion, 1st Marine Division out of Camp Pendleton, California, is expected to receive the first ACV 1.1 vehicles. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2018/06/19/bae-wins-marine-corps-contract-to-build-new-amphibious-combat-vehicle/
11 janvier 2019 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
By JACQUELINE KLIMAS Small, lower cost satellites are beginning to gain traction among intelligence agencies, says a top industry executive. National security agencies are steadily testing out more small satellites before committing to new constellations of the lower-cost alternatives, according to Bill Gattle, the president of Space and Intelligence Systems at the Harris Corporation. “We're seeing a lot more acceleration, certainly in the intelligence community, on their willingness to adopt it. We've certainly seen some things out of Army,” said Gattle, a former program director of terrestrial communications and director of engineering for defense programs at the Pentagon. “It's moved from ... customers being intrigued to believing it's worthy of a demo.” Small satellites are typically no bigger than a refrigerator and weigh less than 180 kilograms, according to a NASA fact sheet. By comparison, some of the largest satellites are the size of a school bus. The reduced size means small satellites are typically cheaper but less capable than their larger counterparts. To make up for that gap, small sats can be launched in a constellation of tens or even hundreds of satellites, networked together, making the entire system more resilient if one goes offline. At the beginning of 2018, Harris had three customers for its small sats. A year later, it has five government customers under contract for 17 small satellites. One of those is for an Army communications satellite, Gattle said, though the company could not provide additional details. That doesn't mean there's been universal acceptance. Even Gattle acknowledges there are hurdles the small satellite industry needs to overcome to see sustained growth in the military and intelligence market. “How do you get the data quickly from the satellite to the war fighter who needs it?” Gattle said. “It doesn't help you to know a missile landed five minutes ago. You have to have the timeline be very quick and you need need a communications backbone ... which will be pivotal to how fast this grows.” Gattle also talked about the launch of Harris' first small satellite last month, how the company is going on a hiring spree and what 2019 has in store for the industry. Full article: https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/09/satellites-bill-gattle-national-security-1089126