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  23 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Relance : la commande de 20 Rafale préconisée par un rapport parlementaire

  Les députés Benjamin Griveaux et Jean-Louis Thiériot, membres de la commission de la défense de l'Assemblée nationale, ont publié un rapport sur «la place de l'industrie de défense dans la politique de relance». Pour les rapporteurs, «l'Etat arrive à une séquence historique où c'est à la Défense de prendre le relais des marchés civils et export». Ils plaident pour une relance «par les commandes militaires», estimant notamment qu'une « commande d'une vingtaine de Rafale» est aujourd'hui «indispensable». Un tel contrat dépasserait les deux milliards d'euros ; afin de venir en aide aux sous-traitants de Dassault Aviation, cette commande devrait être passée dans les prochains mois. L'Opinion du 23 juillet

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  9 décembre 2019 | International, Naval

  France orders six patrol ships, equipped with drones and able to secure prisoners

  By: Christina Mackenzie PARIS — France has ordered six 70-meter-long (230-feet-long) offshore patrol vessels from Socarenam, a shipyard in Boulogne-sur-Mer on the country's northern coast, to patrol its vast economic exclusive zone. The announcement was made earlier this week by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Maritime Economy Congress in Montpellier, southern France. These kinds of announcements are usually either made by the minister for the armed forces or by the DGA procurement agency. Following the president's announcement, the Armed Forces Ministry said in a statement that the ships had been ordered “in a context of increasing threats to our fishing resources, biodiversity and international maritime rules." "France intends to fully exercise her sovereignty and responsibilities both in her metropolitan and overseas territories,” the statement continued. France has the largest economic exclusive zone in the world, at about 4,514,000 square miles. By comparison, the United States's EEZ comes in at about 4,383,000 square miles. Each vessel's draft is no more than 3.8 meters, has a maximum speed of at least 22 knots that it can hold for 24 hours but with a normal cruising speed of between 12 to 14 knots, and has a range of 5,500 nautical miles. This enables the ships to stay at sea for a month. French media reports the ships are likely to carry a 20mm remotely controlled gun and machine guns, but no official weapons specifications have been published. The tender and the technical specifications, issued by the DGA in 2018, called for the ships to be able to deploy a 700-kilogram-class rotor-blade drone, and to be able to keep it under cover. The tender also said the ships should be able to deploy divers and two high-speed intervention boats, as well as keep six prisoners secure. The ships will be delivered to the French Navy between 2022 and 2025. That time frame is two years ahead of the schedule laid out in the 2019-2025 Military Program Law. The value of the order has not been disclosed. “I have decided, as is specified in the Military Program Law, to further strengthen the protection of our maritime spaces. The order for six new overseas patrol boats was officially launched last week by the armed forces minister,” Macron said. “With these ships we will acquire a capacity that we have never yet had on the maritime front to protect our spaces and take on this mantle as a balance of power in the maritime sector.” “We are building a European maritime capacity,” he added, noting that he assumed “responsibility for France taking the leadership.” The ships, known in France as POM (patrouilleur outre-mer), will be based in France's Pacific Ocean territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia, and the French overseas department in the Indian Ocean, Réunion. Some of the ships will join the Pacific fleet at the Nouméa naval base in New Caledonia and at Fare Ute Papeete in Tahiti. Others will join the Indian Ocean fleet at Port Réunion. A naval spokesperson told Defense News that the exact destination for each ship had not yet been officially announced. The order for these six ships is a continuation of a program to bolster France's protection of its maritime regions. Three patrol vessels were delivered between 2016 and October 2019 to the Caribbean region and Guyana on South America's northeastern coast. The three vessels were also built by Socarenam, which has sites in Calais, Dunkirk, Étaples and Saint-Malo. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2019/12/06/france-orders-six-patrol-ships-equipped-with-drones-and-able-to-secure-prisoners

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  14 août 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

  Pentagon is rethinking its multibillion-dollar relationship with U.S. defense contractors to boost supply chain security

  By Ellen Nakashima The Pentagon has a new goal aimed at protecting its $100 billion supply chain from foreign theft and sabotage: to base its weapons contract awards on security assessments — not just cost and performance — a move that would mark a fundamental shift in department culture. The goal, based on a strategy called Deliver Uncompromised, comes as U.S. defense firms are increasingly vulnerable to data breaches, a risk highlighted earlier this year by China's alleged theft of sensitive information related to undersea warfare, and the Pentagon's decision last year to ban software made by the Russian firm Kaspersky Lab. On Monday, President Trump signed into a law a provision that would bar the federal government from buying equipment from Chinese telecommunications firms Huawei and ZTE Corp., a measure spurred by lawmakers' concerns about Chinese espionage. “The department is examining ways to designate security as a metric within the acquisition process,” Maj. Audricia Harris, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “Determinations [currently] are based on cost, schedule and performance. The department's goal is to elevate security to be on par with cost, schedule and performance.” The strategy was written by Mitre Corp., a nonprofit company that runs federally funded research centers, and the firm released a copy of its reportMonday. “The major goal is to move our suppliers, the defense industrial base and the rest of the private sector who contribute to the supply chain, beyond a posture of compliance — to owning the problem with us,” said Chris Nissen, director of asymmetric-threat response at Mitre. Harris said the Pentagon will review Mitre's recommendations before proceeding. She added that the Department of Defense, working with Congress and industry, “is already advancing to elevate security within the supply chain.” Testifying to Congress in June, Kari Bingen, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for intelligence, said: “We must have confidence that industry is delivering capabilities, technologies and weapon systems that are uncompromised by our adversaries, secure from cradle to grave.” Security should be seen not as a “cost burden,” she told the House Armed Services Committee, “but as a major factor in their competitiveness for U.S. government business.” The new strategy is necessary, officials say, because U.S. adversaries can degrade the military's battlefield and technological advantage by using “blended operations” — hacking and stealing valuable data, manipulating software to sabotage command and control systems or cause weapons to fail, and potentially inducing a defense firm employee to insert a faulty component or chip into a system. “A modern aircraft may have more than 10 million lines of code,” Mitre's report said. “Combat systems of all types increasingly employ sensors, actuators and software-activated control devices.” The term “Deliver Uncompromised” grew out of a 2010 meeting of senior counterintelligence policy officials, some of whom lamented that the Defense Department was tolerating contractors repeatedly delivering compromised capabilities to the Pentagon and the intelligence community. Addressing the security issue requires greater participation by counterintelligence agencies, which can detect threats against defense firms, the report said, and ideally, the government should establish a National Supply Chain Intelligence Center to monitor threats and issue warnings to all government agencies. Ultimately, the military's senior leaders bear responsibility for securing the supply chain and must be held accountable for it, the report said. The Defense Department, although one of the world's largest equipment purchasers, cannot control all parts of the supplier base. Nonetheless, it has influence over the companies it contracts with as it is the principal source of business for thousands of companies. It can shape behavior through its contracts to enhance supply-chain security, the report said. Legislation will be needed to provide incentives to defense and other private-sector companies to boost security, Mitre said. Congress should pass laws that shield firms from being sued if they share information about their vulnerabilities that could help protect other firms against cyberattacks; or if they are hacked by a foreign adversary despite using advanced cybersecurity technologies, the report said. Contractors should be given incentives such as tax breaks to embrace supply chain security, the report suggested. The Department of Homeland Security is addressing the security of the information technology supply chain through its newly established National Risk Management Center. “What we're saying is you should be looking at what vendors are doing to shore up their cybersecurity practices to protect the supply chain,” said Christopher Krebs, DHS undersecretary for the National Protection and Programs Directorate. The National Counterintelligence and Security Center, an agency of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that coordinates the government's counterintelligence strategy, said in a report last month that software-supply-chain infiltration has already threatened critical infrastructure and is poised to endanger other sectors. According to the NCSC, last year “represented a watershed in the reporting of software supply chain” attacks. There were “numerous events involving hackers targeting software supply chains with back doors for cyber espionage, organizational disruption or demonstrable financial impact,” the agency found. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-pentagon-is-rethinking-its-multibillion-dollar-relationship-with-us-defense-contractors-to-stress-supply-chain-security/2018/08/12/31d63a06-9a79-11e8-b60b-1c897f17e185_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.265ce85b6eb1