20 mars 2019 | International, Aérospatial

Lockheed, AIM Norway to establish F-16 sustainment hub in Norway

The companies on Tuesday announced a deal to create the first Lockheed-licensed F-16 Falcon Debot in Kjeller, Norway, to support the global F-16 fleet.

March 12 (UPI) -- Lockheed Martin will establish its first F-16 Falcon Depot in the world in Norway with government-owned AIM Norway.

Sustainment services will be provided for the Royal Norwegian Air Force and other regional F-16 customers, Lockheed Martin said in a news release Tuesday.

Full article: https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2019/03/12/Lockheed-AIM-Norway-to-establish-F-16-sustainment-hub-in-Norway/2501552403028/

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  • Two new missiles in the pipeline for longer-range Army fires

    24 décembre 2023 | International, Terrestre

    Two new missiles in the pipeline for longer-range Army fires

    The Army is slated to have two new missile systems in soldiers’ hands in 2024.

  • Russia and US jostle for arms sales to India after tensions with China over border

    13 juillet 2020 | International, Terrestre

    Russia and US jostle for arms sales to India after tensions with China over border

    India is a top buyer of foreign weapons on the international market and Russia has been its main supplier since the Soviet era The June 15 clash between China and India in the contested Galwan Valley lends an urgency to New Delhi's arms programme Russia and the United States are racing to sell weapons to India as New Delhi seeks to boost arms supplies for its ongoing military tension with Beijing. The Indian government last week rushed to approve a proposal to acquire 33 new Russian warplanes for US$2.4 billion and upgrade 59 more, in addition to an earlier US$5.43 billion deal for S-400 air defence missile systems, after the deadly skirmish with Chinese troops last month on their disputed border. However, Russia's close relationship with China raised questions over Moscow's reliability by some in India, while the US, which has been stepping up ties with New Delhi through the Indo-Pacific strategy, has been pushing for arms sale to India. “Many believe that India must not put all its eggs in one basket, rather continue to follow the middle path by pushing for engagement with both Russia as well as the United States,” said Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan, a distinguished fellow and head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. India is a top buyer in the international arms market, with billions of dollars of imports every year. In the past 10 years, it has spent more money on foreign weapons than any other country in the world, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Russia has been the main supplier to India since the Soviet era. Since 2000, it has sold about US$35 billion worth of weapons, accounting for more than two-thirds of India's arms procurement of US$51 billion. Most of India's strategic weapons – from its only active aircraft carrier INS Vikramaditya with its ship-borne MiG-29 and Ka-31 aircraft, to its only nuclear attack submarine in service, the Chakra II, to its T-90 and T-72 main battle tanks – are from Russia. Additionally, Russia licensed Indian firm HAL to build the Su-30 MKI, the main fighter for the Indian Air Force, and contributed to India's only nuclear-capable supersonic cruise missile – the BrahMos. In comparison, arms deals with the US have totalled just US$3.9 billion over the past 20 years but America has been rapidly catching up since 2010 to rise to number two vendor to India, surpassing Israel and France. India has equipped its military with Boeing C-17 and C-130J airlifters. Earlier this year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to US President Donald Trump to buy US$3 billion worth of US equipment, including helicopters, as the two converged on a course to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region, and gradually formed much closer military ties with a series of strategic military pacts Then the tension between India and China suddenly escalated, culminating in a clash on June 15, in which at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the contested Galwan Valley between Indian-administered Ladakh and Chinese administered Aksai Chin. The continued stand-off added urgency to India's arms shopping. “Russians profit from a Sino-India clash. I don't think the Americans would be so happy to see that,” said Zhou Chenming, a Beijing-based military analyst. “The Trump administration has been trying very hard to grab a bigger share in this market of billions every year, which they wouldn't want to miss.” The US has leverage. The 2017 Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) punishes whoever engages in “significant transactions” over US$15 million with the Russian state-owned defence industry. And Washington has remained non-committal despite the constant request for an exemption from the Indian side. “I don't think the US will actually implement the sanction at the end of the day. That was part of the effort to pressure India to choose American arms over Russian,” said Song Zhongping, a military commentator in Hong Kong. “And Russia will not sit by. They will also take action to keep India on.” Other efforts include discussions earlier this year in which the US offered to develop for India a “super F-16”, and even transfer the production line to India as preferred by the Modi government, as well as other air defence missile alternatives to the S-400. The US has delivered Apache and Chinook helicopters now deployed in Ladakh. Song said India's buying spree could increase its strength against the Chinese army but only to a limited extent. “India could buy some advanced weapons but cannot buy real combat capability. A modern military is an organic system,” he said. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3092710/russia-and-us-jostle-arms-sales-india-after-tensions-china

  • Can The UK Afford To Develop Its Tempest Optionally-Manned Stealth Fighter?

    30 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

    Can The UK Afford To Develop Its Tempest Optionally-Manned Stealth Fighter?

    Seventy-six years after higher-performing Tempest fighters joined the Royal Air Force's Hawker Typhoons in harrying Nazi air and ground forces during World War II, the United Kingdom is once again counting on a warplane called the Tempest to replace succeed its Typhoons. London has big ambitions for its Team Tempest program kicked off in 2018, which aims to develop a sixth-generation optionally-manned stealth fighter (ie. it can fly without an onboard pilot if necessary) to enter service around 2040 to replace its current fleet of Eurofighter Typhoon jet fighters. Unfortunately, those ambitions may simply not square with the money available for “Combat Air” programs in the British defense budget according to a new paper published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the UK's premier defense think tank. The author of Combat Air Choices for the UK Government, defense analyst Justin Bronk, argues that putting U.K's strategic goals in line with its available financial means may require procuring more stealth jets in the short term, while in the long term reconceiving the optionally-manned Tempest as a more affordable unmanned (drone) combat systems. British Combat Air Power, circa 2020 Today's Royal Air Force draws its primary combat strength from a projected fleet of 145 Eurofighter Typhoon fighters deployed in seven operational squadrons concentrated in two lightly-defended airbases, as well as a testing and training squadron each. Developed by a British/German/Italian consortium (BAE/Airbus/Leonardo respectively), the Typhoon is an advanced 4.5-generation fighter originally focused on a high-speed and high-altitude air-to-air combat, but which has since integrated short- and long-range precision ground attack capabilities. The RAF plans to further upgrade its Typhoons with an advanced CAPTOR-E active electronically scanned array radar which will substantially improve the type's reconnaissance, air-to-air, air-to-ground and self-defense capabilities. But because the Typhoon isn't a stealth aircraft, it can't safely penetrate airspace interdicted by long-range surface-to-air missiles like Russia's S-400 system until those systems are suppressed or destroyed. That job is set aside for 48 Lockheed F-35B Lightning II stealth jump jets shared by the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and the Royal Air Force, of which 35 have been delivered so far. Though less agile than the Typhoon, the Lightning's low radar cross-section allows it to penetrate hostile airspace in comparative safety, while its powerful networked sensors enable it to locate and destroy air defense batteries and other key targets—or shuffle targeting data to non-stealth platforms a safe distance away to execute a strike Unfortunately, as discussed in this article by David Axe, 48 F-35s may not be enough to perform the anti-air defense mission in a hypothetical high-intensity conflict with Russia, particularly when the Royal Navy will want a significant chunk of those jets deployed on its Queen Elizabeth-class carriers to support naval operations. Lastly, the UK is finishing procurement of sixteen MQ-9B Protector drones which can cost-efficiently perform long-endurance surveillance and on-call strike missions in a counter-insurgency context. However, the MQ-9B lacks the stealth or agility to survive in a high-intensity conflict. The Tempest, not by Shakespeare In July 2018, the UK launched Team Tempest, a project to develop an optionally-manned sixth-generation stealth fighter that could replace the Typhoons as they age out of service in 2040. A mockup of a sleek twin-tail stealth design was unveiled at the Farnborough Airshow in July 2018, as well as a presentation highlighting concepts including adaptive cycle turbofans built by Rolls-Royce, revolutionary electrical power generation capabilities, integration of directed-energy (ie. lasers or microwaves) and hypersonic weapons, AI that could assist the pilot or even fly the plane without one, and control of swarms of supporting drones. London has committed £2 billion ($2.6 billion) in initial funding to Tempest, and Italy and Sweden have joined in as partners via companies Leonardo and Saab. Involvement of the Netherlands has also been rumored. In 2020, the British government announced it had recruited seven more companies into the program, and that the number of persons working on Team Tempest would increase from 1,800 to 2,500 by 2021. Tempest is implicitly a rival to the French-German-led Airbus/Dassault Future Combat Air System project which also includes Spain, though there has been tentative suggestions that FCAS and Tempest could be merged. According to Bronk, because modern combat aircraft have grown so immensely expensive to develop, and retaining a core of specialized engineering expertise is so vital, the fate of the Tempest program may determine the future of the UK's military aviation sector, which currently counts 46,000 jobs. “Tempest is the only way that the UK can retain a national combat aircraft design and manufacturing capability, and is currently the assumed source of a replacement capability for Typhoon by 2040... A failure of Tempest to generate significant airframe production contracts would also all but guarantee the demise of UK defence industry combat aircraft design and manufacturing capacity.” In other words, a failed Tempest project could relegate British companies to building components for other jets like the F-35 instead of for domestic jet fighter designs. The Budgetary Crunch Unfortunately, based on other stealth fighter programs abroad, completing development of an optionally-manned Tempest fighter would likely cost at least £25 billion ($32.5 billion) according to Bronk. Already, he writes there is “no headroom” to develop Tempest in the £18 billion set aside in the defense budget for Combat Air over the next decade, nor even to acquire more than 48 F-35s. The paper outlines some ways the Ministry of Defense could reallocate funds, arguing the RAF should do a “large-scale culling” of capabilities that wouldn't be survivable in a conflict with Russia, namely slow-moving intelligence/surveillance aircraft (ISTARs) and transport planes and helicopters. Additional F-35 purchases could be of the cheaper land-based F-35A model, which besides has superior performance. And older, more limited-capability Typhoon Tranche 1 aircraft could be retired early in the late 2020s. Nevertheless, completing Tempest would still likely require a large injection of funds outside of the regular defense budget. Instead, the report argues Tempest would likely become much more affordable as a stealth unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV). Indeed, analysts are debating whether even the United States should choose to go that route for its next generation fighter. Removing a pilot achieves major weight savings as cockpit, ejection and life support systems can be trimmed away. The UK has already developed the Taranis stealth UCAV prototype, showing it already has a knowledge base with such technology. Furthermore the paper argues that unlike manned aircraft, closer to 100% of drones can remain available for operational missions. This is because pilots can do all of their training in simulators and units don't need to be rotated out of the line to rest and recover. That would mean both that a smaller number of UCAVs would need to be procured than jet fighters, and fewer personnel would be required to maintain them. “Cost savings derive from the significantly reduced airframe complexity, fleet size, training, testing and certification requirements compared to a piloted aircraft development effort... Without the need to rotate squadrons, airframes and personnel for training, maintenance, deployment and rest cycles, UCAVs offer significantly more operationally ready airframes from a given fleet size.” Admittedly, a Tempest UCAV would be less profitable for British defense industry. “The lower production volumes and rates which make UCAVs attractive from a military capability standpoint also greatly reduce potential profits per customer for industry,” Bronk concedes. Making the leap from manned to unmanned combat aircraft comes with other challenges. One is the need to harden UCAVs against hostile cyber- and electronic-warfare that could disrupt the command link. That likely includes building in autonomous AI capability so that UCAV can complete missions without relying on human direction. Especially in lower-intensity conflicts, it may be preferable to have a human pilot who can judge better from context whether a target is civilian or military. And air forces led by fighter pilots may resist the idea of replacing manned aircraft with unmanned ones. Regardless of whether one agrees with the RUSI report's recommendations, it seems clear that London will need to make some difficult choices in the years ahead as it balances the desired to field an effective air force today with investing in new technologies for tomorrow. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastienroblin/2020/07/30/can-the-uk-afford-to-develop-its-tempest-optionally-manned-stealth-fighter/#4452a87249b9

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