10 mai 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
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10 août 2020 | International, Naval
Major Submarine Contractor Drops Navy Missile Tube Biz
The disclosure comes as the Pentagon has been looking for ways to backstop key parts of its industrial base as supply chains slowed due to the COVID epidemic.
By PAUL MCLEARY
WASHINGTON: One of the Navy's primary suppliers of missile tubes for its nuclear submarines is planning to walk away from the military business, a move that will drop the number of domestic companies capable of doing the work to two at a time when the service is in a scramble to ramp up its sub-building efforts.
BWX Technologies President Rex Geveden says that the company is “not likely to pursue” any more Navy business and will repurpose a factory in Indiana that makes the components once the next set of deliveries of missile tubes wrap up in 2022. The Navy work “just doesn't have the margin profile that we want to see in the business,” Geveden said in a Tuesday investor call.
BWX was slated to build the missile tubes for the new Columbia subs, but prime contractor Electric Boat says it has options to replace the company in coming years.
The company “works with multiple suppliers to ensure we can meet the Navy's schedule requirements on these important programs,” a spokesperson emailed. “These are Babcock Marine, BAE Systems, Precision Custom Components and BWX Technologies. BWX Technologies will complete all currently contracted work for EB by 2022.”
This comes as the Pentagon has been looking for ways to bolster key parts of its industrial base as communities shut down and workers are told not to report to work or take time off, due to the COVID epidemic.
In a call with reporters late last month, Navy acquisition chief James Geurts acknowledged that the service is deeply worried that such closures and slowdowns could have wide-ranging impacts on shipbuilding. “I am absolutely interested in ensuring that we don't lose large chunks of the industrial base,” he said. “Restarting an industrial base that you lose is really hard, really painful, and takes a long time. We are absolutely focused on ensuring we do not lose an industrial base because we don't have the time or resources to re-generate it later when we need it.”
The winnowing of such a key part of the industrial base will place more pressure on the handful of other companies who can do this sort of work, something to which Pentagon leadership is particularly sensitive.
Overall, the Navy plans to buy 12 Columbia-class submarines between 2021 and 2035, with 10 of those coming 2026 and after. In the near-term, it plans two Virginia-class subs per year between 2021 and 2026, meaning shipyards will have to pump out two to four submarines a year in the mid-2020s.
The new Columbia submarines will begin being delivered to the Navy in 2030, just in time to begin replacing the Cold War-era Ohio-class subs as the Navy's leg of the nation's nuclear triad. The subs will carry 70 percent of the nation's stockpile of warheads allowed by the New Start treaty with Russia.
Falling in to replace the Ohio's on time would be a critical failure for the nation's nuclear triad, as the aging ships will have next to no life left in them by the end of the decade, and leaving the sea leg of the nuclear enterprise in some jeopardy.
Babcock Marine is a UK-based company, but does work on some components that are used for both the Columbia program and the UK's Dreadnaught submarines, which shares similar missile tubes with the Columbia effort.
In 2018, Virginia-based BWX was forced to pay $27 million to fix welding problems on the Columbia tubes, after issues were found on a total of 44 tubes. So far, 21 of those have been fixed and 11 delivered to the Navy.
Navy officials have closely tied the modernizing of the current Virginia-class subs with the building of new Columbia's, warning that since they share a base of companies who can make precision parts for nuclear-powered submarines. So any problem with one program will have knock-on effects to the other. Geurts and others have said the Navy would prioritize the health of the Columbia effort over Virginia if they had to.
If the House of Representatives gets its way, however, billions more will flow into the Virginia program than the White House has called for. Last week, the House voted to fund the construction of a second Virginia-class submarine in the 2021 budget request, after the White House dropped the planned buy to one submarine in its submission.
The push was led by Rep. Joe Courtney, chairman of the Seapower Subcommittee who represents the Connecticut district that's home to Electric Boat. The bill now includes $6.8 billion to produce two Virginia-class attack submarines, approximately $2.5 billion more than the White House's own request, and $2.2 billion more than the Senate's.
“The budget request we received from the White House flew in the face of testimony that we've heard from Navy leaders, experts, and combatant commanders,” Courtney said in a statement. “It requested the fewest ships in over a decade, and it eliminated construction of the second Virginia-class submarine in 2021—a vessel that the Navy quickly listed as its most important unfunded priority in 2021.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/08/major-submarine-contractor-drops-navy-missile-tube-biz
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18 septembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Companies are lining up to build a replacement for the MQ-9 Reaper drone
Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — As the U.S. Air Force embarks on a new effort to field a replacement for the MQ-9 Reaper drone, multiple defense companies are stepping up with new, long-range, stealthy design concepts for the emerging MQ-Next competition. On Sept. 11, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin released renderings of their respective offerings for the Air Force's MQ-Next program. Northrop made public its swarming SG-2 concept, and Lockheed announced its flying-wing design. General Atomics put out a concept drawing of a next-generation uncrewed aerial system on Sept. 14 to correspond with the first day of the Air Force Association's Air, Space and Cyber Conference. For the past two decades, the Air Force has relied on the MQ-1 Predator and then the MQ-9 Reaper — both made by General Atomics — as its workhorse drones for surveillance and strike missions in the Middle East. But as more commercial drone makers enter the fray, it may become more economical and effective to operate a family of UAVs, with some built for high-end penetrating strike and reconnaissance missions, and others for low-end surveillance from commercial off-the-shelf manufacturers, said Will Roper, the Air Force's top acquisition official. “You might make the case that the Department [of the Air Force] needs both,” he said during a Sept. 15 roundtable with reporters. “But I wanted to give our team time to discuss with industry options that exist on both sides of that divide. We've got a lot of interesting responses, and I'm in discussions right now with the operational side of the Air Force about what they think the requirement is going to be.” The Air Force issued a request for information to industry on June 3, seeking market research on available technologies as well as conceptual designs. Boeing and Kratos each confirmed they responded to the request for information but have not released concept art for their potential offerings. General Atomics, Lockheed and Northrop have begun to shed light on their respective designs. Northrop's flying-wing design bears a close resemblance to the X-47B the company designed for the Navy, including using the same Distributed Autonomy/Responsive Control flight management system, which allows for operators to task multiple drones to fly autonomously according to parameters set by the user. However, the aircraft in the rendering is just one potential concept that Northrop could develop for the MQ-Next family of systems, said Richard Sullivan, the company's vice president of program management. “The customer didn't really give us strict requirements. We know that the [National Defense Strategy] scenario calls out environments with a pretty significant threat scenario. And so, what would we do to mitigate those?” he said. “We looked at those things, and we came up with a family of concepts ... trying to solve the problem across the landscape in terms of the ranges, the threats and the costs.” The General Atomics concept features a stealthy, long-winged, jet-powered air vehicle — a departure from the turboprop-powered MQ-9 Reaper. Dave Alexander, president of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, told Defense News that the aircraft's survivability and endurance, which is “significantly longer” than the Reaper, will be defining characteristics for the company's offering. Alexander also pointed to internal investments made by the company's aeronautics division and its Electromagnetic Systems Group on advanced propulsion systems, though he declined to say more about potential engine advancements. Keeping costs down will also be an important factor, he said. “Some platforms that get up to super high costs, even though they're unmanned — you can't afford to lose them. So they're not attrition-tolerant, and we want to hang on to that piece of it.” Lockheed Martin's operational analysis has found that an optimal-force mix of drones will require high-end aircraft and low-cost, expendable systems that can operate in swarms, according to Jacob Johnson, the company's unmanned aerial systems program manager. The company's next-generation UAS concept art features a tailless, stealthy, flying-wing design geared toward the high-end fight, although Johnson said Lockheed may put forward less exquisite systems depending on the Air Force's final requirements. “Over the last few years, with a lot of the [drone] shootdowns across the globe, one of the trends that I think is hard to ignore is what used to be considered permissive airspace. [It] is becoming increasingly contested,” he said. “Survivability is really the key to almost any mission, and I think that trend is going to continue into the future.” However, survivability alone will not be enough, Johnson said. The Air Force has made clear that any future air system must plug into the service's Advanced Battle Management System and export data across that system. Lockheed also plans to develop the drone using digital engineering to lower the total cost. https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/air-force-association/2020/09/17/defense-companies-are-lining-up-to-build-a-replace
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16 juin 2023 | International, Aérospatial
Cubic Awarded Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Contract to Provide SPEAR Air Combat Training Solutions
Revolutionizing the world’s most complex and advanced air combat training, SPEAR is the follow-on solution to Cubic’s ICADS, the combat air forces’ live monitor and debrief system for over two...