28 janvier 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Boeing ceded its long-held top spot as America's largest aerospace and defense firms to Lockheed Martin after reporting financial results from an abysmal 2020 on Wednesday.
The Chicago-based company also said it would lose another $275 million building Air Force KC-46 tankers because of “program primarily due to production inefficiencies including impacts of COVID-19 disruption.” The company has lost more than $4 billion on the project.
The company closed 2020 — a year that saw the collapse of passenger air travel from the coronavirus pandemic and the return to flight of the 737 Max airliner — with just under $58.2 billion in revenue, down 24 percent from the previous year.
While Lockheed — which on Tuesday reported $65.4 billion in 2020 sales — has long been the world's largest defense contractor, revenue from Boeing's commercial airplane business has combined with its military work to keep it atop the defense-and-aerospace category for decades.
Boeing's defense and space sales were flat year-over-year at just shy of $26.3 billion. Its services business, which includes defense work, made $15.5 billion, down 16 percent as thousands of aircraft remain grounded due to the pandemic.
“Overall, the government services and defense and space businesses remain significant and relatively stable and we continue to see solid global demand for our major programs,” CEO David Calhoun said on the company's quarterly earnings call Wednesday. “Nevertheless, the scale of government spending on COVID-19 response has the potential to add pressure to global defense spending in the years ahead.”
U.S. defense spending is expected to flatten or decline in coming years as the Biden administration and a Democrat-controlled Congress focus more on domestic issues.
Calhoun said the company expects its defense business to grow in the “lower end of the single digits” in coming years.
“It's hard to commit to a big uptick in any way on growth rates anytime soon, in light of what I think are the pressures,” he said.
Calhoun, who became CEO of the firm one year ago this month, said the coronavirus would continue to delay international defense contracts.
“The order activity in those international markets has pushed to the right, somewhat of an almost entirely because of COVID-related stuff, not because of any competitive issue one way or the other,” he said.
Like many of his colleagues in recent years, Calhoun touted Boeing's classified military work as being “incredibly encouraging and incredibly important to us.”
Despite the continued problems with the KC-46, the Air Force has purchased 94 of a planned 179 aircraft. Just this month, it placed two orders totaling $3.8 billion for 27 aircraft.
The FAA last month cleared the 737 Max for passenger flights in the United States. Some airlines have already resumed flights across North and South America. European regulators on Wednesday said the plane can resume flights across the continent.
Boeing also disclosed Wednesday that it would not deliver its first 777X, a larger, more efficient version of the popular 777 jetliner, until late 2023.
24 avril 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Johnson said the two countries would seek closer defense procurement 'to meet threats across land, sea and air, space and cyber, including partnering on new fighter jet technology [and] maritime technologies to detect and respond to threats in the oceans.'
23 octobre 2020 | International, Aérospatial
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — European NATO nations without the fifth-generation F-35 combat jet should mold their fleets to complement the U.S.-developed aircraft in future operations, according to a new report commissioned by U.S. European Command. The analysis, done by the think tank Rand and published Oct. 22, ascribes such a vital advantage to the F-35′s stealth and sensor-fusion features that the jet would be the only aircraft suitable for an initial contact with Russian forces in the event of a conflict. Following that logic, European nations that have already signed up for the Lockheed Martin-made jet should hone their tactics toward that initial engagement, and countries with less advanced aircraft should strive to maximize their ability to complement such an operation, the authors argued. The United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Belgium and Italy are European NATO members in various stages of getting F-35 aircraft. One tier below that, in the eyes of Rand analysts, are countries like Germany or France whose Eurofighter and Rafale fleets, respectively, have sensors advanced enough to be considered “fourth-generation-plus” aircraft. The report's recommendations are based on the hypothetical premise of a Russian land grab on the alliance's eastern flank. “One common scenario considers a calculation by the Russian government that Russia could leverage a regional imbalance in ground forces to occupy some slice of NATO territory, employ air defenses to stave off allied air forces, present a fait accompli similar to that seen in Crimea, and politically divide NATO by calling for negotiations,” the document stated. “The ability of European fifth-generation fighters to penetrate Russian air defenses and make significant combat contributions from the opening hours of a response — at the vanguard — would most likely challenge the logic behind this scenario, improving deterrence by increasing the Russian risks associated with this approach.” The observation follows the belief, which the authors propose is shared by Russia, that NATO forces have the upper hand in air-combat capability, whereas Moscow has the lead in ground forces. To be sure, the Rand analysis covers only one dimension in a potential confrontation with Russia. Air and naval assets as well as cyber weapons for information warfare would also shape the battlefield in potentially unpredictable ways, not to mention any surprise capabilities that either side could throw into the mix to nullify the opponent's technological advantage. The problem for European nations' fourth-generation and “fourth-generation-plus” aircraft, which lack stealth capabilities, is the inability to get close enough to targets without getting shot down by sophisticated air defense weapons, according to Rand. The key to making the best of the continent's aircraft mix is developing the fleets with greater interoperability in mind, the analysts argued. In that sense, non-stealthy combat planes, which typically can carry more weapons than the F-35, still have an important role to play after more advanced fighters clear any ground-based threats. European nations are studying two versions of a sixth-generation weapon for air combat, namely the Tempest project (led by the U.K.) and the Future Combat Air System (led by France and Germany). Those aircraft ideas are slated to come online around 2040, which puts them outside of the scope of the Rand analysis. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/10/22/european-nations-should-shape-their-air-combat-fleets-to-support-the-f-35-us-analysts-say/
28 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Nicolas Berrod Jambe bionique, casque de réalité virtuelle... Le premier salon de l'innovation de la Défense ouvre, ce samedi, au public. Pour avoir une idée de ce à quoi va ressembler le soldat du futur, il faut se rendre à... la Cité de la Mode et du Design ! C'est ici, dans l'Est parisien, que se tient le premier Salon de l'Innovation de la Défense, qui ouvre ses portes au public samedi. Dans les allées, on croise des militaires, industriels, scientifiques, venus présenter leurs propres projets -160 sont exposés. Le robot greffeur de peau permet, par exemple, de soigner un soldat brûlé, à proximité du champ de bataille, sans attendre trop longtemps. Le principe est simple : un bras robotisé prélève à un endroit sain un échantillon de peau, qui, une fois mélangé avec une encre spéciale, via une imprimante 3D, est greffé sur la partie blessée du corps. « On peut le faire en une seule fois et l'opération ne dure pas plus de quelques heures », assure Amélie Thépot, la présidente de la start-up LabSkin Creations, qui à conçu le projet avec les Hospices de Lyon. Une jambe bionique Pour les militaires plus gravement blessés, la société Proteor a imaginé une jambe bionique nouvelle génération, constituée d'un ensemble genou-cheville-pied contrôlé par un microprocesseur. Abel Aber, 32 ans et militaire de formation, a perdu sa jambe gauche dans un accident à l''ge de 17 ans. Depuis, ce grand gaillard utilise plusieurs prothèses dont celle-ci qui lui « apporte un nouveau confort de marche, même si ça reste évidemment contraignant ». L'outil, développé avec le soutien de la Direction générale de l'armement (DGA) et disponible d'ici 2021, a ses limites : impossible pour le moment de monter un escalier, par exemple. « Et pour faire du sport, on a besoin de prothèses plus spécifiques », glisse cet amateur de boxe thaï. Un casque de réalité virtuelle Autre innovation qui attire l'attention : la cape d'invisibilité, dite Caméléon. Imaginé pour camoufler un véhicule terrestre, ce système optique fonctionne gr'ce à une caméra haute définition qui capte l'environnement, et le reproduit ensuite sur la surface du blindé. « Les soldats peuvent facilement changer de treillis mais on ne peut pas repeindre un véhicule selon l'endroit où il se trouve », justifie Sébastien Fagour, ingénieur chez Nexter Systems. Article complet: http://www.leparisien.fr/high-tech/comment-l-armee-se-prepare-aux-batailles-du-futur-23-11-2018-7951917.php