15 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
By Reuters
WASHINGTON — Lockheed Martin Corp has won a preliminary contract valued at up to $22.7 billion to build a batch of 255 F-35 jets for the U.S. military and its allies, the U.S. Defense Department said on Wednesday.
The department said the deal would allow Lockheed to receive $6 billion in funding immediately, a move aimed at preventing major delays in production of the new stealthy fighter jets.
This contract is the first to lock in multiyear commitments from U.S. allies as Lockheed anticipates that buying components in larger quantities will help move the price of the most common F-35 jet to below $80 million by 2020. The most common variation of the jet, the F-35 A, had a price of $89.2 million after the most recent round of contract negotiations announced in September.
Lockheed is developing and building three models of the new warplanes for the U.S. military and 10 other countries that have signed up to buy the jets: Britain, Australia, Italy, Turkey, Norway, the Netherlands, Israel, Japan, South Korea and Belgium.
The Pentagon's chief arms buyer, Ellen Lord, told Reuters on Tuesday that she expected to finalize the interim terms of the deal, known as an "undefinitized contract action" or UCA, with Lockheed, its No. 1 supplier, by the spring of next year.
A Lockheed representative said: "This is a smart approach for the taxpayer, the warfighter and for industry."
According to the Pentagon, Wednesday's agreement means that U.S. allies buy 149 jets over the three-year period. In the United States' one-year deal, it will buy the remaining 106 jets for delivery beginning in 2020.
The U.S. government will continue to buy jets in annual contracts, but is also purchasing components for future-year jets and will also benefit from the economies of scale allowed under the multiyear contract.
The three-year deal, known as the "block buy" among the United States and allies, has been said to be worth more than $37 billion and encompass a record 440 jets.
Wednesday's contract agrees to a high-water mark of $22.7 billion for all of the 255 jets, but that dollar figure is expected to come down during the negotiations while the jet count is considered a minimum commitment.
The interim payment authorized on Wednesday will be deducted from the total contract when the two sides reach a final agreement.
The Pentagon is negotiating a separate contract with Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp, for engines to power the jets.
(Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/11/14/business/14reuters-usa-lockheed-pentagon.html
21 novembre 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
North Korea exploits fake IT firms and workers globally to fund weapons programs, evade sanctions, and conduct cyberattacks.
14 janvier 2021 | International, Naval
By: David B. Larter WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy wants to buy a next-generation large surface combatant by the end of the 2030s, but its not being built for a new kind of sensor or weapon system. The newly dubbed DDG(X) is being built for power. The Navy has, of course, built ships around advancements in engineering systems before: Nuclear power or steam engines, for example, have led to big leaps in naval design. But the large surface combatant is being built around a significant challenge. Weapons systems of the future such as high-powered electronic warfare systems, laser weapons, and high-powered radars and sensors will put an uneven and sometimes even unpredictable load on a ship's power system. That's pushing the Navy toward an integrated power system, says Rear Adm. Paul Schlise. “We're going to incorporate an Integrated Power System that has the ability to power up the weapons and sensors of the future,” Schlise said during the Surface Navy Association's virtual annual symposium. “[That's] the key to the realm here. It's DDG-1000-like, in some respects in that it'll have that integrated power system, but the most important thing is including the space, weight, power and cooling — reestablishing those margins to incorporate future systems that are not yet mature. “There's a lot of promise in some of those systems, but that integrated power system is the key to incorporating those feature systems that we're looking at, that we think are going to be part of that class of ship.” What is an integrated power system? Mark Vandroff, a former senior director of the National Security Council and a retired Navy captain who was the program manager for the Navy's new DDG Flight III program, said it's a major break from the kind of system used on Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. “A major advantage of a ship with an integrated power system is that the power generated by any of the ship's engines can be used for either propulsion or electricity, rather than having engines solely dedicated to one or another.” On today's destroyer, and on the Ticonderoga-class cruisers, the ship has separate systems that power the twin propulsion shafts, which turn the ship's propeller and generators that work exclusively to power the ship. An integrated power system, similar to what is on the Zumwalt-class destroyers, uses all the ship's engines to make electricity that turns the propellers and powers the weapons and sensors. The integrated power system on Zumwalt is a new layout that uses advanced induction motors to produce up to 78 megawatts of electrical power, far more than any previous destroyer or cruiser. But the issue with the large surface combatant is a little more complicated than just producing a ton of power. What energy weapons or advanced electronics systems do is put a huge tax on the electrical system of a ship, often requiring more power than the ship is able to produce at one time. So while the integrated power system isn't new, the kinds of demands these new systems will place on the power grid meant to run everything is a new kind of challenge, said Matthew Collette, associate professor of naval architecture and marine engineering at the University of Michigan. Therefore, the Navy must figure out how to best store energy so it can be available to meet unpredictable demands. “The issue is, this is different than integrated electric propulsion, which we've had on cruise ships and offshore supply vessels for two decades at this point, and it works really well,” Collette said. “But on those ships, all the electrical loads are pretty well behaved: They rise and fall slowly, and there's no issues with the stability of the electrical system. “High-powered radars, high-powered electronic warfare, certainly rail guns, the lesser extent lasers — they all ask for power really quickly, faster than a mechanical generator can suddenly produce it. So now you have to think about whether [you] use batteries or flywheels or capacitors or other techniques to get the energy available on the timescale that the load needs.” It's not an insurmountable problem, and it is one the Navy has used elsewhere. The electromagnetic launch system on the Ford-class, which has had its share of technical problems, operates off a flywheel energy storage system. But the new power system already has Congress nervous, and lawmakers are pressuring the Navy to build a land-based engineering site to test out the power and propulsion system before getting too deep into the design work for the ship. Collette said that's a sensible approach, and that on the timeline the Navy is discussing, the technology should be sufficiently advanced to support the new class. “There's been a ton of work done on this, and I think it's certainly something that in the timeframe of a large surface combatant, I would expect would work,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/surface-navy-association/2021/01/13/for-the-us-navy-the-future-of-shipbuilding-and-warfare-is-in-the-power-plant
18 février 2022 | International, Aérospatial
The increased focus on cislunar projects reflects a growing recognition of a near-term need for deep-space domain awareness.