Lockheed awarded $450.7M contract for Saudi patrol ships

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  22 mai 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense

  BAE Makes Big Bet On Small Companies: FAST Labs

  By THERESA HITCHENS BOSTON: BAE Systems, the third-largest defense contractor in the world, is funding innovative small startups to get innovative technology quickly to its Defense Department customers. Through an initiative called FAST Labs, BAE is both providing seed capital directly to startups and funding a number of accelerators to widen the potential market. The standard tactics include simply buying a smaller company to gain its technology or investing in a startup in order to control the direction of its research. Instead, BAE's FAST Labs is attempting to serve as a middle man connecting startups with DoD customers and BAE's various units. “By giving [the startups] the feasibility money, we can expose them to those harsh requirements that exist in the aerospace and defense world, but we can also in turn do social engineering inside our company,” Jerry Wohletz, the vice president and general management of BAE FAST Labs, told me. The idea is to introduce the startups' designs to BAE's factory and engineering work force, he said, “because we need to get it out of R&D land and get it into those products and services” that BAE knows its defense customers are looking for. FAST Labs is focused on research related to next-generation electronics, intelligent autonomous systems, cyber, electronic warfare, and sensors and processing. Wohletz explained that BAE does in-house research on capabilities that are solely of interest to DoD and the Intelligence Community, but it is reaching out to startups in order to partner on products and services based on commercial market needs. “A lot of aerospace and defense companies have venture capital funds,” Wohletz said. “That's not what we are trying to do. This is not an equity play to drive bottom line performance. We talk here about innovation velocity. We want speed to market.” Therefore, BAE is also putting its money — but more importantly its time — into a number of technology accelerators, such as Techstars in Boston, Capitol Factory in Austin, Texas, and MASSChallenge with hubs in both cities. FAST Labs has a team of scouts whose job is to attend pitches all across the country. “This is not based on ownership. We leave them their freedom,” Francesca Scire-Scappuzzo, who heads the scout team, told me. “We want innovation not just to support our market, we want to support their own innovation” for the commercial market. “Other defense contractors are trying to get involved with venture capital, but they for the most part don't really get it. BAE was in early, and they had the benefit of being linked with us,” Lt. Col. Dave Harden, chief operating officer of AFWERX, the Air Force's innovation hub, told me during the Techstars Air Force Accelerator Demo Day here last Thursday. Indeed, BAE cosponsored the event, and put upfront investment in at least three of 10 start-up companies participating. Neither Wohletz or Scire-Scappuzzo would tell me the size of BAE's budget for startup investment, but Wohletz said “it's getting bigger every year.” Further, the company is using accelerators not just to help itself innovate, Wohletz said, but also to find foreign companies to partner with in bids where the buying country requires offsets, such as India. “It's a completely different way of looking at this than we have done in the past,” he summed up. https://breakingdefense.com/2019/05/bae-makes-big-bet-on-small-companies-fast-labs/

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  17 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Defense Innovation Unit issues contract for unmanned orbital outpost

  Nathan Strout The Defense Innovation Unit has awarded Sierra Nevada Corporation a contract to build an orbital laboratory that would serve as a kind of unmanned space station, the company announced July 14. The unmanned orbital outpost will be placed in low Earth orbit to be used for experiments and demonstrations. The autonomous, free flying vehicle will be able to host payloads and support space assembly and manufacturing, microgravity experimentation, logistics, training, testing and evaluations. Under the contract, Sierra Nevada Corporation will repurpose their Shooting Star transport vehicle into a scalable, autonomous space station that can be used for experiments and demonstrations. The Shooting Star vehicle is a 16-foot attachment to the company's Dream Chaser space plane that was developed for NASA Commercial Resupply Services 2 missions. The vehicle was initially designed to provide extra payload storage and cargo disposal upon re-entry. “We're excited by the multi-mission nature of Shooting Star,” Fatih Ozmen, SNC's chief executive, said in a statement. “It was originally developed for NASA resupply missions to the International Space Station, and since then we keep identifying new capabilities and solutions it offers to a wide variety of customers.” The company's press release notes that while the initial orbital outpost will operate in LEO, future orbits could be placed in other orbits, including cislunar. “The current Shooting Star is already designed with significant capabilities for an orbital outpost and by adding only a few components we are able to meet Department of Defense needs.” added Steve Lindsey, senior vice president of strategy for SNC's space systems. “We are proud to offer our transport vehicle to DoD as a free-flying destination for experimentation and testing, expanding beyond its current payload service capabilities for Dream Chaser cargo missions.” According to the original DIU solicitation released June 2019, orbital outposts will need to be established in low Earth orbit within 24 months of the award. A DIU spokesperson told C4ISRNET at the time that the “the prototype will explore the military utility of exclusive DoD access to an unmanned orbital platform in order to perform experiments with no risk to human crew or other non-DOD payloads.” https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield-tech/space/2020/07/16/defense-innovation-unit-issues-contract-for-unmanned-orbital-outpost/

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  30 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Britain Spent So Much On Two Giant Aircraft Carriers, It Can’t Afford Planes Or Escorts

  David Axe The United Kingdom is spending nearly $8 billion building two new large, conventionally-fueled aircraft carriers and equipping them with F-35B Lightning II stealth jump jets. HMS Queen Elizabeth is scheduled to deploy for the first time in 2021, ending a seven-year carrier gap that began in 2014 when the Royal Navy decommissioned the last of its three, Cold War-vintage light carriers. The U.K. military by then had already sold off the carriers' Harrier jump jets. Queen Elizabeth and her sister Prince of Wales are impressive vessels. More than 930 feet long and displacing around 70,000 tons, they are bigger and more modern than every other flattop in the world except the U.S. Navy's 11 nuclear-powered supercarriers. The carriers in theory are the steely core of a revitalized and reorganized Royal Navy. “Carrier strike provides the ability to launch fixed-wing aircraft from a ship to undertake a range of military tasks,” the U.K. National Audit Office explained in a June report. “It is central to the government's plans for the country's armed forces.” But there's a problem. Having blown billions of dollars building the ships, the U.K. government no longer can afford the aircraft, escorts and support ships that help the flattops deploy, protect them and give them striking power. Nor can the government afford to modify Queen Elizabeth or Prince of Wales to support amphibious landings, one of the early justifications for cutting existing ships—such as the assault ship HMS Ocean—in order to free up money for the carriers. The new British carrier force is hollow. And at least one analyst believes the Brits would have been better off without. The shortfalls are myriad, according to the NAO. The carriers' air wings at a minimum should include a dozen F-35Bs plus a dozen Merlin helicopters, some of which would carry the Lockheed Martin LMT-made Crowsnest early-warning radar in order to provide sensor coverage over the carrier group. Guess what. “The new Crowsnest system is 18 months late, which will affect carrier strike's capabilities in its first two years,” according to the NAO. “The [Ministry of Defense] did not oversee its contract with Lockheed Martin effectively and, despite earlier problems on the project, neither was aware of the sub-contractor's lack of progress until it was too late to meet the target delivery date.” “It subsequently concluded that the sub-contractor working on the project, Thales, failed to meet its contractual commitments to develop the equipment and had not provided sufficient information on the project's progress. The [ministry] and its industry partners have since implemented a recovery plan and enhanced monitoring arrangements. However, further delays mean that it does not expect to have full airborne radar capability until May 2023.” Meanwhile, the ministry also has been slow to buy F-35s. “From 2015, its intention has been to buy 138 Lightning II jets, which will sustain carrier strike operations to the 2060s. The [ministry] initially ordered 48 jets but has not yet committed to buying any more. In response to wider financial pressures, it will also receive seven of the 48 jets in 2025, a year later than planned.” A single Queen Elizabeth-class flattop could carry as many as 24 F-35s. But a total force of 48 F-35s probably wouldn't allow for a 24-plane air wing after taking into account training and maintenance needs. As a rule, usually no more than third of a particular fighter fleet can deploy at any given time. Equally vexing, the Royal Navy has laid up all but one of its solid support ships, which sail along with front-line vessels in order to keep them stocked with food, parts and weapons. The defense ministry “has long been aware that this will restrict the operational freedom of carrier strike but has not yet developed a solution,” the NAO warned. “In November 2019, the [ministry] stopped the competition to build three new support ships due to concerns about value for money. It believes this will delay the introduction of new ships by between 18 and 36 months, making it uncertain the first new ship will be operational before the existing support ship leaves service in 2028.” The list of shortfalls continues. A British carrier group at a minimum should include one frigate for anti-submarine protection plus a destroyer for air-defense. But the Royal Navy operates just 13 aging Type 23 frigates and six Type 45 destroyers. The former are slated to leave the fleet starting in 2023. Their replacement, the new Type 26, won't start joining the fleet until 2027. The navy expects to buy just eight Type 26s. At least five new Type 31 frigates will replace the balance of the Type 23 force, but the Type 31s lack major anti-submarine systems. All that is to say that, from the mid-2020s on, the carriers could be vulnerable to submarines. Don't expect some sudden cash windfall to save the Royal Navy from its carrier problems. If anything, the budgetary problems could get worse. The defense ministry already is cutting back on its investment in Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales. The government had planned to spend $75 million modifying one of the new flattops with extra accommodations in order for the ship to double as an amphibious assault ship. But according to the NAO, the ministry in March 2020 quietly dropped the amphibious requirement. The bitter irony for the navy is that it sacrificed the assault ship Ocean back in 2018 in order to free up money and manpower for the carriers and eventually claw back the lost amphibious capability by way of modifications to at least one of the newer ships. Now it appears the fleet gave up Ocean for nothing. So are the new flattops worth it? As costs rise and budgets shrink, the carriers gobble up a growing proportion of the Royal Navy's resources while at the same time falling far short of their operational potential owing to cuts at the margins of their capabilities. “Given that what the Royal Navy has become in return for its two carriers, and given how at present this investment has delivered a part-time carrier force with a small number of available fast jets, significant spares shortages, reduced escort fleet numbers and a lack of longer-term support ships or escort elements,” one commentator wrote, “then perhaps the answer to the question ‘was it all worth it' is ‘no, it was not worth the pain for the gain'—at least not in the short term.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2020/06/28/britain-spent-so-much-on-two-giant-aircraft-carriers-it-cant-afford-planes-or-escorts/#7988b615bcc7