Lockheed Martin shares slide 5% on F-35 headwinds despite lifting profit and sales forecast

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  21 novembre 2024 | International, Terrestre

  The F-15 fighter jet is having a second spring in Asia

  South Korea is in line for major upgrades to its fleet, while Indonesia has signaled interest in the warplane type.

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  11 février 2021 | International, C4ISR

  Urgently needed: Tech-savvy defense leaders

  By: Nate Ashton Defense priorities are shifting toward emerging technologies at an unprecedented pace, but still not fast enough to keep America ahead of potential adversaries. We need to hit the accelerator by drastically increasing the tech savviness of defense leaders. The defense establishment is better at this than it used to be. We've seen a rapid expansion of new authorities and programs to drive tech innovation since Pentagon leaders started talking about the “third offset” in 2014. The 2021 National Defense Authorization Act continues that trend, establishing a national cyber director position, elevating the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, and calling for open-systems architecture and API usage in some key programs. But we will not keep our current military superiority through these kinds of incremental changes alone. We need a radical shift in how the Department of Defense does business. Any organizational transformation starts with the right leadership. This is doubly true in government, where the bureaucracy is built to maintain the status quo and avoid risk to guarantee continuity of operations and effective stewardship of taxpayer dollars. But understanding where risk and opportunity lies — in areas from cybersecurity to agile procurement — is now much more important than knowing how to manage a major, multibillion-dollar weapons system procurement. The Biden administration and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin should start by filling key acquisitions and management roles with leaders who have experience in the tech or venture sector, or have a record of disruptive innovation within the DoD itself. These people must bring both an understanding of the current tech landscape and a willingness to back the innovators under them. Without a clear, top-down mandate to disrupt the status quo, nothing will change. The new administration should also make it a priority to heed the advice of defense and technology advisory boards. Oftentimes leaders who have spent their careers in tech, venture, and private research and development may be unsuited for full-time government positions, yet bring invaluable perspective and expertise. The Biden administration should continue and accelerate the work already being done to implement the Defense Innovation Board's recommendations for training and software acquisition and the Cyberspace Solarium Commission's recommendations for security. More than identifying useful, new technologies, defense leaders must transform culture and skills at all levels of the DoD to operationalize tech innovation. The hardest part of driving change in a big organization is not recognizing the end goal nor setting policies to get there, but rather operationalizing it at all levels across the millions of active-duty, civilian and contractor personnel doing the day-to-day work. This will take massive investments in training the existing workforce, strengthening the pathways between defense and the national tech and venture ecosystems, and changing processes to enable and incentivize new ways of doing business. The DoD needs to make aggressive investments in the near term. In the near term, defense leaders should: Train all DoD personnel on emerging technology. The need for these types of knowledge across the DoD simply can't be met by existing resources, which is why Dcode has worked with the Defense Acquisition University, AFWERX and others to equip defense leaders to innovate like a startup, evaluate tech like an investor and understand the emerging tech landscape. Provide advanced training and specialization on commercial tech procurement and software procurement for contracting and information security personnel. Today's purchases are best-value decisions that require true subject matter expertise to scope problem sets, assess the best solutions and bring those solutions in. In contracting, the practice of rating bids based on meeting rigid requirements and competing on price alone simply does not work. In security, moving from compliance-based to risk-based approaches will require a massive influx of technical talent and training. Expand, promote and incentivize industry exchange programs both ways: pulling in private sector talent, and sending the DoD's talent on loan to the tech and venture industry. Fund and empower tech innovation hubs. Some of the biggest successes in recent years have come from newer innovation hubs and centers of excellence that are proliferating across agencies and programs. Efforts like these should be encouraged to both replicate best practices from existing hubs that have seen success, seeded with funding to try new things, and matured into programs of record as their business model proves out. One need only look at the significant measurable outcomes that the Defense Innovation Unit and AFWERX have driven in recent years, with a relatively minimal amount of resources, to see that they are only just beginning to scratch the surface. Driving internal disruption at scale will take an exponential increase in the number of people and amount of funding. The future of defense innovation is bright, and the community of passionate leaders inside and outside of the government working to move things forward is incredibly inspiring. I'm hopeful the Biden administration and new Congress will see 2021 as the year to make ambitious investments for the future. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/02/10/urgently-needed-tech-savvy-defense-leaders/

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  30 octobre 2018 | International, Naval, C4ISR

  UK MoD gets budget boost of more than $1B with three programs in mind

  By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — Britain's Ministry of Defence has been given a £1 billion (U.S. $1.28 billion) spending boost in the Treasury budget announcement Oct. 29, with Chancellor Philip Hammond suggesting the money would be mainly spent on three strategic military programs. Hammond said the additional money would be available in the coming months. Cyber, anti-submarine warfare and the Dreadnought nuclear submarine build program all got named as destinations for the extra cash. “As a former defense secretary myself I understand the immediate pressure our armed forces are facing, so today I will provide £1 billion to cover the remainder of this year and next to boost our cyber, and anti-submarine warfare capacity and to maintain the pace of the Dreadnought program,” Hammond told Parliament. The increase caught many by surprise. Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has been battling with Hammond for months for extra cash, but a massive funding commitment to the National Health Service made new funds toward security seem unlikely. Jon Louth, the director for defence, industry and society at the Royal United Services Institute think-tank in London said the additional funding was good news, but fell well short of what is required. “It's welcome, but comes nowhere near addressing the potential funding gap if you add up all the programs in the equipment plan. It does appear to be a significant increase in percentage terms, although the devil will be in the detail,” he said. The RUSI analyst said the outcome was “better than we expected a few months ago. Politically people will be chalking that up as a win for Williamson in the context of the wider government budget. One billion pounds is a win,” he said. Louth cautioned against getting too hung up on the chancellor's announcement about where the extra cash will be spent. “I suspect when we come to see how the money is used next year it will potentially be a little different from the chancellor's headlines today,” he said. Defense consultant Alex Ashbourne Walmsley of Ashbourne Strategic Consulting said the new money was a “sticking plaster, but it will buy the MoD a bit more time to work out how to do more with less.” Earlier this year the MoD received a total of £800 million in funds to keep the program to build four Trident missile equipped Dreadnought nuclear submarines on track. Some £600 million of that cash came from a £10 billion contingency fund set aside by the government for the Dreadnought program. Ashbourne-Walmsley described the Dreadnought program as a “money pit.” The MoD is trying to bridge a funding gap in its £179 billion 10-year equipment plan. The black hole is put at anywhere between £4 billion and £20 billion by the National Audit Office, the government's financial watchdog. The final figure is dependent, in part, on how effective an ongoing efficiency drive is at the MoD. The MoD budget for this year is £36.6 billion with 15.6 percent of that spent on equipment procurement and 18.7 percent on support. The Conservative government is committed to increasing equipment spending in real terms by 0.5 percent a year until 2020. A long running review, known as the Defence Modernisation Program, has been looking at how British armed forces can adapt and transform to meet the changing and growing military threat, while at the same time balancing the books — an effort that could require capability cuts in several areas. Publication of that report has already been kicked down the road a couple of times. Although Williamson may announce something before the end of the year, analysts and industry executives expect little of substance ahead of a comprehensive spending review due to take place across all government departments next year. Hammond appeared to say as much today when he told Parliamentarians the modernisation review will “form the basis for a comprehensive consideration of defense spending next year.” “The Modernizing Defence Program is increasingly tied into the comprehensive spending review and the 10-year equipment plan in 2019. We might get a whitepaper in late winter or early spring to set up some of the themes but the details won't be out until beyond April,” said Louth. Some industry executives though are starting to wonder if the modernization program could be published even by April. One executive who asked not to be named, said he wondered whether the comprehensive spending plan might be the trigger for a full blown strategic defense review, particularly if Brexit goes badly and the economy takes a big hit. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2018/10/29/uk-mod-gets-budget-boost-of-more-than-1b-with-three-programs-in-mind