LOCKHEED MARTIN ANNOUNCES $100 MILLION VENTURE FUND INCREASE

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  7 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Boeing’s F-18 jet may have a leg up in Germany over Eurofighter

  By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — The race between Boeing's F-18 jet and the Airbus Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft to replace Germany's Tornado fighter-bombers has tilted toward the American plane, according to a German media report. That is after German defense officials received information from the Pentagon about the time needed to certify the Eurofighter to carry nuclear weapons, according to an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Getting the Eurofighter approved for that mission would take between three and five years longer than the F-18, which is considered a nuclear weapons-capable aircraft in the U.S. military, the newspaper reported. Germany has kept a subset of its approximately 80-strong Tornado fleet equipped to carry out the NATO nuclear-sharing doctrine. That means in the case of a hypothetical atomic war, German pilots would load their aircraft with U.S. nuclear bombs and drop them on their intended targets at the behest of the alliance. While Germany's nuclear mission periodically comes up as a source of controversy here, previous governments have left it untouched, portraying the largely symbolic assignment as a vital element of trans-Atlantic relations. A spokeswoman for the Defence Ministry in Berlin declined to comment on the SZ report, saying only that American and German defense officials have been in “continuous conversations” on the issue. The government is expected to announce a winner between the F-18 and the Eurofighter Typhoon early next year. In January 2019, defense officials eliminated the F-35 as a candidate, largely because picking an American plane would weaken the case for having such weapons be made by European companies in the future. Such is the case with the Future Combat Air Systems program, led by Airbus and Dassault. Airbus says if Germany chooses the Eurofighter as a Tornado replacement, it would be easier for companies on the continent to transition to an eventual development of the German-Franco-Spanish platform. The German defense minister's visit to Washington last month put the spotlight back on the prospect of an American buy, however. “We want to treat this question jointly,” Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer told reporters in the U.S. capital on Sept. 23. She added that Germany wants a “gap-less” continuation of the Tornado's capabilities, adding that she envisions a “tight schedule” for the replacement. Airbus, meanwhile, doesn't see the need to rush. With 10 years or so left before ditching the Tornado, the reported nuclear-certification time seems to still fit into the overall replacement schedule, spokesman Florian Taitsch told Defense News. Plus, he argued, it should be expected that, when given a choice, the Trump administration with its “America First” doctrine would be keen to push American-made weapons over European ones. “For us, the situation hasn't changed,” Taitsch said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2019/10/04/boeings-f-18-may-have-a-leg-up-in-germany-over-eurofighter/

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  18 août 2020 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR

  Kratos Targets Ground System ‘Revolution’

  We think that p-LEO is a big deal. And there's got to be a revolution that has to hit the ground segment, says Phil Carrai, president of Kratos's space, training and cyber division. By THERESA HITCHENSon August 17, 2020 at 1:20 PM WASHINGTON: As DoD and commercial industry scramble to develop small satellite constellations in Low Earth Orbit for everything from high-speed communications to near-real time Earth observation, Kratos is quietly working to solidify a central role providing the new ground systems required to make them work. While there is enormous military and commercial interest in the proliferation of small LEO satellites, known as p-LEO, not nearly as much attention has been paid to the radically different ground-based infrastructure to support those constellations. But the necessary changes in ground architecture will be monumental, and extremely lucrative for those companies at the crest of that wave. “We think that p-LEO is a big deal. And there's got to be a revolution that has to hit the ground segment,” says Phil Carrai, president of Kratos' space, training and cyber division. “We think this is kind of our play for the next many years. ... We've been making some substantial investments in that, in the sense of taking what was analog and stovepiped and moving it into a digital, dynamic, cloud infrastructure.” Kratos, headquartered in San Diego, is a mid-tier company with $750- to $800 million in annual revenue, and is perhaps best known in the defense arena right now for its low-cost attritable drones. Its XQ-58A Valkyrie is one of the top contenders for the Air Force's high-profile Skyborg program to build autonomous drones that can mate with piloted aircraft for a variety of missions; it also is providing an airframe, based on its Mako UTAP-22, as a subcontractor to Dynetics in DARPA's Gremlins program to develop drone swarms. But space-related work is the firm's bread and butter. Kratos' space, training and cyber Division is the company's biggest, Carrai said, with a large, but often behind-the-scenes, footprint in both the military and commercial satellite communications markets. Indeed, while Valkyrie's role in the Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS), which is developing new technologies to support command and control of future all-domain operations, has been well documented, Kratos space-related comms systems and ground equipment are actually playing a bigger part as subsystems within many other company's offerings, company officials explained in a teleconference with Breaking D. “Our space portfolio really is all about communications and the ground segment, if you will, so that's been our heritage,” Carrai said. “Probably 90 percent of US satellite missions use our technology in one form or fashion. So, we are rather unique in the sense that we can claim the US Air Force and SMC [Space and Missile Systems Center] as one of our largest customers, and, probably in our top 10 or top five, Intelsat and SES are also very large customers.” The advent of 5G mobile telecommunications networks, and its promise of hyper-connectivity through the Internet of Things including from space, has mesmerized DoD and the Intelligence Community, as well as industry. The chief benefit of tying together satcom and wireless and terrestrial networks, for both national security and commercial communications, is expanded reach to hard-to-access areas. For example, satellite signals have trouble penetrating areas like ‘urban canyons'; laying fiber and erecting cell-towers in rural and harsh terrain such as mountainous regions is very costly if not impossible, but satellite communications is relatively simple. The challenge is integrating currently incompatible (in more ways than one) and heavily stovepiped networks in a seamless fashion that allows near-instantaneous roaming among them. That is why the ground system issue is so important. “We think that there's a substantial change that needs to take place from the ground perspective,” Carrai said. Not only will there need to be “way more sites” to connect to fast-moving LEO satellites due to the simple laws of physics, but satellite ground stations will need to be configured more like terrestrial communications nodes with machine-to-machine operations ensuring the best link to any one satellite at a given place or time. Chris Badgett, Kratos VP for Technology, explained that this kind of “dynamic resource allocation or that dynamic situational awareness” is particularly important to military users in order to provide jam-proof communications. In essence, this would allow a military radio to ‘jump' from one frequency being jammed to another that is open. Today, if ‘changing the channel' is possible, it is up to a solider or sailor or Marine to figure that out and manually flip switches. The ultimate goal is to automate that frequency and network ‘hopping' capability so that users don't even notice that it's being done. The mess that is the world of DoD satcom terminals is a long-standing sore-thumb for operators, particularly in the Army. As Breaking D readers know, DoD currently maintains 17,000 terminals with “approximately 135 different designs,” as the Government Accountability office found. Those terminals operate across diverse platforms—such as ships, backpacks, vehicles and aircraft — all with differing system requirements, so that for the most part each terminal system (i.e. each type of radio) is tied to only one satellite network and one type of platform. And while fixing the current problem is already a Herculean task, it could be a show-stopper to Dod's vision of future all-domain operations, linking sensors and shooters provided by all the services together via a Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) network. “The major obstacle that we have from a ground system standpoint is the current ground architectures have all been designed and developed in a very stove-piped and mission-specific sense. And so each ground system was designed for the mission that it was supporting,” said Frank Backes, senior VP for Kratos Space Federal Solutions. “Where we're going now with a joint, or combined, capability is the integration of those ground systems. And therein lies the complexity. “How do you take a legacy-based architecture that was very stovepipe designed and integrate it together into a common system that gives you enterprise-wide control of the infrastructure, and also gives you the awareness of all the systems? It's very easy to become overwhelmed in the information that a combined system provides,” Backe added. As Breaking D readers know, sorting out those answers is what Gen. Jay Raymond, head of the Space Force, set out to do with his Vision for Enterprise Satellite Communications (SATCOM). That is aimed at creating a seamless network of military and commercial communications satellites in all orbits, accessible to troops, vehicles, ships and aircraft via ground terminals and mobile receivers that would automatically “hop” from one satellite network to another. Carrai said Kratos believes that ultimately the “current analog stovepipe infrastructure that exists today” must simply be replaced. What is needed for integrated satcom is “a roaming modem or a roaming terminal,” and the ability to integrate satellite-provided imagery into the network, a “kind of a virtual antenna.” “If you don't have that capability, you're not going to be resilient, it's going to cost a lot of money, and you're going to create a huge exposure because everybody's going to know what antennas are used for what purpose,” he added. All that said, Carrai opined that partly because of push from the Space Force, the stovepipe problem with milsatcom networks is beginning to change. “It's still a struggle,” he said, because “there's a lot of drive from the spacecraft manufacturers to link the ground system with it. You know, that's what makes it a multibillion dollar system.” In addition, he said, the scramble by commercial satcom operators to get on the 5G bandwagon is forcing them to figure out how to open up proprietary networks. “Commercial operators all see that 5G and data is their future, not broadcast, he said. “The commercial operators are going to lead if not the defense side because they have to interoperate with the telecom operators if they're going to survive.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/kratos-targets-ground-system-revolution

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  29 octobre 2020 | International, Terrestre

  Boeing has another overrun on the KC-46, but its CEO says there’s reason for hope

  Valerie Insinna   WASHINGTON — Boeing reported another $67 million charge on the KC-46 tanker program in third-quarter earnings disclosed Oct. 28, capping off a difficult quarter defined by continued hardships on its commercial side. The increase in KC-46 costs was “due to continued COVID-19 disruptions and productivity inefficiencies,” Boeing's chief financial officer, Greg Smith, told investors during an earnings call. However, Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun expressed confidence that the program would turn the corner in 2021 and become profitable for the company. “The tanker has been a drag on us for three or four years in every way you can think of with respect to investors,” he said. “But we are continuing to clear the hurdle with our customers with respect to its performance in their fleet and their need for that tanker. "That whole relationship, I believe, will begin to transition next year, and opposed to being a drag on our franchise — which it's been — I believe it will become a strength in our franchise.” Previous charges on the KC-46 program amount to about $4.7 billion — almost equal to the $4.9 billion sum of the company's firm fixed-price contract with the U.S. Air Force, which it signed in 2011. In July, a $151 million charge was attributed to the decline in commercial plane production driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. That slowdown has made it more expensive to produce commercial derivative planes like the KC-46, which is based on the Boeing 767 and made on the same production line in Everett, Washington. Overall, defense revenues slightly decreased to $6.8 billion “primarily due to derivative aircraft award timing,” the company said in a news release. But that impact paled in comparison to Boeing's commercial business, where revenues dropped from $8.2 billion in 2019 to $3.6 billion in 2020. As a result of those continued difficulties, the company plans to lay off an additional 7,000 workers by the end of 2021, Calhoun announced. At that point, Boeing's workforce will have been cut by almost 20 percent, down from 161,000 earlier this year to about 130,000 employees. Smith characterized 2020 has a “year of transition” for defense programs like the MQ-25, T-7 trainer and the Air Force One replacement, which are in development. Once those programs move into production, Boeing expects to see “modest growth,” he said. But Calhoun added that global defense spending is unlikely to greatly increase in the coming years, meaning that growth in Boeing's defense portfolio will be limited. “In fact, we believe there will be pressure on defense spending as a result of all the COVID-related spending that of course governments around the world have been experiencing,” he said. “I don't think we're looking at that world through rose-colored glasses. I expect real pressure on that market.” https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2020/10/28/boeing-has-another-overrun-on-the-kc-46-but-its-ceo-says-theres-some-reason-for-hope/