Lockheed Martin-Led Team Begins Construction On Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship, The Future USS Beloit

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  21 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  With Glue, Japan Uses Composite For Fighter Substructure

  TOKYO—Japanese engineers, working on replacing fasteners with glue, are applying composite to combat-aircraft substructure as well as the ... http://aviationweek.com/defense/glue-japan-uses-composite-fighter-substructure

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  2 octobre 2018 | International, Terrestre

  Army Looks to Nature to Improve Body Armor

  By ARL Public Affairs Future soldiers will be better protected in combat by stronger and lighter body armor thanks to innovative work at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory. Materials science engineers are using nature as the inspiration for breakthroughs in additive manufacturing. “My project is to design a system that can 3-D print armor ceramics that will allow production of parts with graded structures similar to an abalone structure in nature that will improve the ceramic armor's toughness and survivability with lower weight,” said Joshua Pelz, a materials science and engineering doctoral candidate at the University of California San Diego. He spent this summer working with Army scientists at ARL's Rodman Materials Science Laboratory at APG to design and build a unique 3-D printer. Two syringes containing distinct, viscous ceramic slurries are connected to a custom-made auger and print head. Pelz took advantage of his computer programming skills to hack into the 3-D printer, tricking it into using its own fan controls to manipulate the ratio of materials being printed. He designed a custom auger and print head and even used the same 3-D printer to create those parts. “Josh found a way to implement our ideas into that machine, take apart machine, take out the polymer FDM heads that are built into it, start to look at how to design the machine to incorporate our ceramic slurries and print those slurries into the head but then he had to do a lot of really basic work looking at how to actually hack the machine,” said Dr. Lionel Vargas-Gonzalez, Ceramics Synthesis and Processing team lead at the laboratory. “We've got people like Josh who were very gifted and talented and can bring all that kind of capability and use a lot to our advantage it's a huge benefit for us.” Current processing techniques used to create ceramic armor are limited by how engineers can combine materials into a stronger composite material. “For ceramics, that's a bit of a challenge because with you can't really do what a one-step additive manufacturing process like you could if a metal or a polymer,” Vargas-Gonzalez said. “We see this as a next avenue for armor because we're going to be able to, in theory, design armor in a way that we can attach multiple materials together into a single armor plate, and be able to provide ways for the armor to perform better than it can be just based on one material alone.” Full article: http://science.dodlive.mil/2018/10/01/army-looks-to-nature-to-improve-body-armor/

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  6 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Opinion: Why Interest On Federal Debt Matters For Defense

  Byron Callan June 30, 2020 The COVID-19 pandemic has stoked consternation that U.S. defense spending is going to be significantly pressured in the 2020s. Congress will likely stick to the $740.5 billion defense discretionary top line agreed to in last year's budget deal for fiscal 2021. But the combination of trillions more in federal debt from higher spending and lower tax receipts this year and next and the probability that there will be future federal spending to better prepare for pandemics raise a higher probability of defense spending pressure. “Flat” was already the new “up,” but “flat” now may be a budget that does not keep pace with annual inflation. The fears may be that defense spending will decline in the 2020s after a couple of good years of largesse from Congress and the White House. Despite trillions in additional deficits and federal borrowing in 2020-21, there is one bright spot that indicates less dire defense spending pressures than now perceived—the interest on the federal debt. U.S. federal debt is comprised of debt held by the public and intragovernmental debt, which is owned by different federal trust funds, the largest of which is Social Security. As of May, total debt held by the public was $19.8 trillion, and intragovernmental debt was another $6 trillion. Often, these two sums are lumped together, but they should be treated separately. The interest paid on debt held by the public is dispersed by the Treasury in the form of outlays to the owners of that debt. The interest paid on intragovernmental debt is, in essence, interest the federal government pays itself. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), in its annual projections of outlays, breaks out these two components of interest outlays to show net interest outlays. This is mandatory spending, and so it has been paid along with the other mandatory and discretionary funding the U.S. federal government provides. One of the silver linings of the pandemic has been the Federal Reserve's aggressive lowering of interest rates. This makes federal debt more affordable, much in the way that a lower interest rate on a home mortgage can make a place to live more affordable. The OMB projections released in February showed net interest outlays of $378 billion for fiscal 2021 rising to $665 billion by 2030. One could take issue with the deficit projections behind these outlay projects, as they may have rested on GDP growth expectations that were too optimistic and nondefense spending cuts that were not going to be realized. However, dividing interest outlays on debt held by the public by debt projections implied an interest rate of 3% or more over the forecast period. The pandemic has trashed those rate projections. Federal debt held by the public is offered in different maturities. Treasury bills, which mature in a year or less as of May, were 23% of the total debt held by the public. Treasury notes that mature in 1-10 years were 51%, and bonds that mature in 10-30 years were 12%. (There is another 10% of other Treasury instruments.) Rates now are much lower, although clearly that would only matter for new debt that is issued by the Treasury. The rate on a 90-day Treasury bill is currently 0.13%. On a five-year note, it is 0.33%, and on the 10-year note, 0.69%. The 30-year note rate is 1.4%. This implies that interest outlay projections should be declining, although new projections may have to wait until the White House releases its 2022 fiscal budget request and out-year projections, presumably in February-March 2021. Net interest outlays could be at least $100 billion less in 2022-23 than the February 2020 projections on higher debt but lower rates. In the scheme of total federal outlays, which the OMB projected to be $4.8 trillion for 2021, $100 billion is not a lot, but it indicates there is a bit more headroom for defense spending and other nondefense discretionary spending than a focus on federal debt alone might suggest. Federal infrastructure spending could be one area of more traction in the 2020s, and the issue of social justice may also spur more demand for federal resources. One outcome of the pandemic, however, will be to make defense expectations more sensitive to interest rate expectations. It is not too difficult to project scenarios with rising debt and interest rates that increase to more “normal” levels. The pandemic also underscores that the unthinkable should be given a bit more room on long-term projections. It is quite conceivable that a major military conflict, a massive natural disaster or another economic contraction could further add to federal debt in the 2020s. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/opinion-why-interest-federal-debt-matters-defense