Lockheed gets $1.4B contract for F-35 sustainment

Sur le même sujet

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  21 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Contract Awards by US Department of Defense - October 19, 2018

  AIR FORCE Raytheon Missile Systems, Tucson, Arizona, has been awarded a $62,016,768 cost-plus-incentive-fee option (P00012) to contract FA8675-16-C-0044 for the Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile (AMRAAM) program. This modification provides for the exercise of options for Phase 5 activities and foreign military sales (FMS) drawings for the form, fit and function refresh of the AMRAAM guidance section. Work will be performed in Tucson, Arizona, and is expected to be completed by Dec. 21, 2020. This contract involves FMS to Norway, Turkey, Japan, Romania, and Australia. FMS funds in the amount of $6,072,542 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colorado, has been awarded a ceiling $36,043,319 cost-reimbursement type contract for Solid State Laser Effects and Modeling. This contract provides for developing innovative diagnostics/test methods, increasing fidelity, realism and confidence of predictive models, measuring and consolidating laser vulnerability data, and working synergistically with tri-service for high energy laser system research. Work will be performed at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico, and is expected to be completed by Oct. 24, 2022. This contract award is the result of a competitive acquisition and one offer was received. Fiscal 2018 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $100,000 will be obligated at the time of award. Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, is the contracting activity (FA9451-19-C-0001). Infinity Systems Engineering LLC, Colorado Springs, Colorado, has been awarded a $22,653,934 firm-fixed-price contract for Global Positioning Systems Engineering, Analysis & Remote Site Sustainment II. The contract provides organizational maintenance and operational support services to the operational unit that will include remote site technicians, network administrative officers and operations support. Work will be performed in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2025. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition and three offers were received. Fiscal 2019 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $2,565,094 are being obligated at the time of award. Space and Missile Systems Center, Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, is the contracting activity (FA8823‐19‐C‐0001). Advanced Electronics Co., Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, has been awarded a $9,437,259 modification (FA8505-11-D-0002-0006-12) to contract FA8505-11-D-0002 for the Royal Saudi Air Force Electronic System Test Set. The contract modification incorporates a 15-month extension in order to allow for the completion of the Royal Saudi Air Force Electronic System Test Sets configuration upgrade. Work will be performed Huntsville, Alabama and in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is expected to be completed by Dec. 28, 2019. This modification involves foreign military sales for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Foreign military sales funds in the amount of 9,437,259 are being obligated at the time of award. Total cumulative face value of the contract is $28,518,831. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia, is the contracting activity. Honeywell International Inc. Aerospace, Albuquerque, New Mexico, has been awarded a $7,838,175 firm-fixed-priced order, for the repair and upgrade of the C-5M Super Galaxy's Versatile Integrated Avionics/Avionics Integrated Units (VIA/AIU). This order provides for the repair and upgrade of 85 of the existing 903 and 904 configuration VIA/AIUs to the 905 configuration. The C-5M VIA/AIU repair and upgrade effort is a key component to the overall Core Mission Computer/Weather Radar aircraft modification/installation kit. Work will be performed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and is expected to be completed by June 14, 2020. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Fiscal 2017 aircraft procurement funds in the amount of $7,146,972; and fiscal 2018 aircraft procurement funds in the amount of $691,203 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting (FA8625-18-F-6801). DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Rocky Brands Inc., Nelsonville, Ohio, has been awarded a maximum $20,566,240 modification (P00005) exercising the second one-year-option period of one-year base contract SPE1C1-17-D-1004 with four one-year option periods for hot-weather combat boots. This is a firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract. Locations of performance are Ohio and Puerto Rico, with an Oct. 20, 2019, performance completion date. Using military service is Army. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2019 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ARMY Science Applications International Corp., Reston, Virginia, was awarded a $13,567,362 firm-fixed-price contract for life cycle management of programs within multiple ammunition product lines. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of Dec. 4, 2023. U.S. Army Contracting Command, New Jersey, is the contracting activity (W15QKN-19-D-0002). Fabritex Inc.,* Hartwell, Georgia, was awarded a $9,257,500 firm-fixed-price contract for non-corrosive 16-block wire mesh for the manufacture and assembly of articulated concrete mattress squares. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work will be performed in Hartwell, Georgia, with an estimated completion date of Oct. 18, 2023. Fiscal 2019 operations and maintenance Army funds in the amount of $9,257,500 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Memphis, Tennessee, is the contracting activity (W912EQ-19-C-0001). *Small Business https://dod.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/1667326/source/GovDelivery/

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  10 juillet 2024 | International, Terrestre

  US to start deploying long-range weapons in Germany in 2026

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  31 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  As Era Of Laser Weapons Dawns, Tech Challenges Remain

  Steve Trimble As the U.S. Air Force comes within weeks of the first operational laser weapons, the Defense Department is hatching new concepts to address the power and thermal management limits of the state-of-the-art in the directed energy field. In a largely secret dress rehearsal staged last week at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, the Air Force performed another round of tests of the deploying Raytheon High Energy Laser Weapon System (HEL-WS), as well as other directed energy options, such as the Air Force Research Laboratory's Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR), says Kelly Hammett, director of AFRL's Directed Energy Directorate. “All I can say is there were multiple systems. From my reading of the reports, it looked like a very successful exercise,” says Hammett, who addressed the Association of Old Crows annual symposium Oct. 29. The Fort Sill experiment was intended to put the weapons through their paces in a realistic operational environment. AFRL's Strategic Development, Planning and Experimentation (SDPE, which, despite its spelling, is pronounced “Speedy”) office called on the HEL-WS and THOR to engage swarms of small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). The experiments also demonstrated new diagnostic tools, allowing AFRL testers to understand the atmosphere's effect on energy propagation in real time. SDPE awarded Raytheon a contract in August to deliver a “handful” of systems to the Air Force for a one-year deployment scheduled to conclude in November 2020. The HEL-WS will be used to defend Air Force bases from attacks by swarming, small UAS and cruise missiles, Hammett says. The Air Force is not releasing the location of the deployed sites for the HEL-WS. AFRL also is grooming THOR for an operational debut. Instead of blasting a UAS with a high-energy optical beam, THOR sends powerful pulses of radio frequency energy at a target to disable its electronics. Hammett describes THOR as a second-generation directed energy weapon. It is designed to be rugged for operational duty and compact enough to be transported inside a single container loaded into a Lockheed Martin C-130. Upon unloading from the aircraft, THOR can be activated within a couple hours, or broken down and moved within the same period, he says. Despite decades of basic research on directed energy systems, such operational capabilities have evolved fairly rapidly. The Air Force finally consolidated its strategy for developing directed energy weapons in the 2017 flight plan, Hemmett said. The document narrowed a once-fragmented research organization that attempted to address too many missions. “Directed energy zealots like myself have been blamed, rightly so, of saying directed energy can do almost anything you want it to do. And we pursued multiple applications to the effect that we were diffusing some of our efforts,” he says. The 2017 flight plan selected three initial use cases: Air base defense, precision strike and self-protect. The HEL-WS and THOR are addressing the first mission. The Joint Navy-Air Force High Power Electromagnetic Non-Kinetic Strike (Hijenks) program is developing a missile to address the precision strike requirement, as a follow-on to the Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (Champ) that concluded five years ago. In the long-term, AFRL also plans to demonstrate the Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (Shield), a podded defensive weapon for aircraft. Although such technology has come far, researchers are still grappling with fundamental issues to make them practical. Namely, the power generation and thermal management requirement for high-energy lasers and high-power microwaves remains a challenge. “If you're willing to have very limited duty-cycle, very limited magazine, the power and thermal management aren't very challenging,” Hemmett says. “Of course, that's not what we want from directed energy weapons. We want deep magazines. We want to be able to handle wave attacks as favorably or more favorably that kinetic weapons.” The “rule of thumb” for a high-energy laser is an efficiency of about one-third, meaning a 300-kW generator is necessary to create a 100-kW laser beam, resulting in 200 kW of waste heat that must be dealt with in some way, says Frank Peterkin, a senior technologist on directed energy for the U.S. Navy who spoke at the same event. On Navy ships, that puts the laser in competition with the electronic warfare and radar subsystems for power and thermal management loads, he adds. “The challenge for the directed energy community is we don't really own the solution,” Peterkin says. “It does need to be a more holistic solution for the Navy. We are a customer, but we're not driving the solution, per se.” Although directed energy researchers cannot design the power grids for bases, ships and aircraft, they can help the requirement in other ways, says Lawrence Grimes, director of the Directed Energy Joint Transition Office within the Defense, Research and Engineering directorate of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. The development of special amplifier diodes for fiber optic lasers are breaking the “rule of thumb” for high-energy systems, Grimes says. “They actually operate at higher temperatures and higher efficiency, so they can reduce the requirement necessary for the prime power and thermal management, and we're not throwing away 200 kW.” Other Defense Department organizations are pursuing more ambitious options. The Strategic Capabilities Office is selecting suppliers to demonstrate small, 10 MW-size nuclear reactors, as a power generation option for directed energy weapons at austere forward operating bases. Meanwhile, AFRL also is considering space-based power generation. Under the Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research program, AFRL will investigate using high-efficiency solar cells on a spacecraft to absorb the solar energy. The spacecraft then would convert the solar energy into a radio frequency transmission and beam it to a base to supply energy. AFRL has awarded Northrop Grumman a $100 million contract to begin developing the technology. If those seem like long-term options, the Air Force is not immediately concerned. The HEL-WS and THOR are designed to use “wall-plug” power or the military's standard electric generators, Hammett says. https://aviationweek.com/defense/era-laser-weapons-dawns-tech-challenges-remain