26 décembre 2024 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR
British Army successfully tests radio wave-based drone defence system
The British Army has conducted “successful” trials of an RFDEW, which can neutralise drone swarms using radio waves.
29 avril 2020 | International, Naval
Navy Acquisition Boosts Ship Contract Awards Under COVID-19
“I think there are ways we can come out of this much more resilient, but you know it's hard to change bureaucracy and institutional ways of doing business [to] make sure that this disruption doesn't go to waste,” says Navy acquisition chief James Geurts.
By PAUL MCLEARY
WASHINGTON: Navy leaders and defense industry execs are worried about the effect the COVID-19 pandemic is having on their supply chains, potentially interrupting critical repair and refit availabilities that could have knock-on effects on deployment schedules.
The Navy's acquisition chief James Geurts told reporters recently that so far, industry is “holding pretty good on near-term milestones,” but he's worried about long-term effects on ship repair and the industry's ability to keep pace.
However, the pandemic seems to be having some beneficial effects.
“Part of my goal for our team is not to recover necessarily to where we were,” before COVID-19, but to change some fundamentals of how the Navy's business gets done, he said. With most of the Navy acquisition force teleworking, “we're basically 32 percent ahead on contract awards,” of where they planned to be at this point in the year. “And so, that means there are processes that are working much more efficiently now than they were before, so I want to capture those,” he said.
The Navy and shipbuilders are trying to do the same thing in the shipyards where “maybe different techniques will allow us to gain some efficiency while also creating some resiliency,” that will help weather any future disruptions and setbacks.
The big shipbuilders like Huntington Ingalls and Bath Iron Works are staggering shifts and allowing liberal leave and teleworking without suffering much disruption so far, company officials have said.
Geurts said the lessons they're learning could lead to the conclusion that, “we cannot operate the way we used to operate, which had a lot of fragility and brittleness as we're seeing right now. It's got to drive to the way we need to operate in the future, which has to have resiliency for whatever disruption that might come up. That's what we're really trying to watch closely and think two or three phases ahead, and not just get caught up in managing today's crisis.”
Even before COVID-19 tore through the global economy, the Navy was looking at ways to save money on repairing ships. Last month the service backtracked on plans for a classwide service-life extension project for its Arleigh Burke-class destroyers that would have added a decade to their 35-year service lives.
Not keeping the Burkes longer, and saving on their life-extension upgrades, would free up money for the Navy to buy more unmanned systems and other smaller ships to fit into plans Defense Secretary Mark Esper is making with Navy leadership for a smaller, faster, more stealthy fleet.
To that end, the service has been working on changing how it awards ship maintenance contracts, and is working to “bundle” multiple ship repair contracts together to give industry a more predictable work schedule, allowing them to plan long-term. “Ultimately, getting them bundles is the key to us being successful delivering these [ships] on time,” the commander of Naval Sea Systems Vice Adm. Thomas Moore said last month at the annual McAleese and Associates Defense Programs Conference.
Awarding several ship contracts at once will allow the shipbuilder to stockpile parts and arrange work schedules in a more efficient and rational manner, as opposed to the one-off, last-minute contracts the Navy has traditionally awarded for ship repair.
“Industry is rational. That's what I tell everybody — you may not like every decision they make, but the decisions most always are very, very rational,” Moore said.
In the end, “we've got to manage our way through delay and disruption, but really focus on steepening the recovery and reinvention phase to get into the place we need to be,” Geurts said. “I think there are ways we can come out of this much more resilient, but you know it's hard to change bureaucracy and institutional ways of doing business [to] make sure that this disruption doesn't go to waste.”
https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/navy-acquisition-boosts-ship-contract-awards-under-covid-19
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19 février 2024 | International, Naval
Univers PME | Un contrat naval de 100 millions pour une (discrète) entreprise de Brossard
Le Groupe Bronswerk a la discrétion des sous-marins qu’elle équipe.
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14 janvier 2019 | International, Terrestre
Here’s when the Army will pick three companies to build the M16/M4 and SAW replacements for soldiers and Marines
By: Todd South By the end of this summer, the Army plans to pick three vendors to build prototypes of the weapons that will replace the M16/M4 and the Squad Automatic Weapon for both soldiers and Marines, both in a new, common cartridge. In the coming weeks, officials will release the official “prototype opportunity notice” with detailed expectations of the new weapons family, including not only the new caliber but also what it wants from the weapons' fire control system. Companies will then have between two and four months to submit their samples for Army officials at Program Executive Office Soldier, Crew Served Weapons to evaluate. At the same time, submissions for a SAW replacement, which was part of an earlier effort that helped lead to this approach, will undergo test-firings in July. That will then close the previous prototyping. Once officials select the three vendors in late summer, officials said, they are expected to have 27 months to mature and finalize the weapon. That means the long-awaited replacement for the basic weapons at the core of Army and Marine squad firepower could be ready for troops by 2021. That far outpaces what used to be the norm for acquiring new weapons, Lt. Col. Jason Bohannon, head of PEO Soldier, Crew Served Weapons, told Military Times in a recent interview. That was because the program was approved last year for rapid prototyping. Bohannon said that allowed the program to “jumpstart” weapon and fire control development. Otherwise, the simple requirements approval portion would have taken at least two years. The testing on the first initiative from last year, the SAW replacement, allowed for what Bohannon called an “unprecedented dialogue with the small arms industrial base.” For more than a decade, researchers and industry experts have advocated for an intermediate caliber replacement for the 5.56mm round. Some advocated for simply converting existing 5.56mm rifles to a 6mm caliber with upper receiver swaps. The Army as a whole received a lot of criticism from experts in those areas for continuing on with the 5.56mm, even with enhanced round versions of the caliber. But, Bohannon said that the Army had squeezed out advances not only in the round but also in the weapons platform of the M16/M4, which has seen hundreds of modifications since it first hit units more than half a century ago. For true “leap-ahead” changes, Bohannon said, “You really had to take a systems approach.” Less than a year ago, the search for a replacement caliber was being kept within the intermediate range, anything from 5.56mm to 7.62mm, the existing calibers used in small units. Most saw something in the 6mm range as ideal, based on decades of ballistics research and advocacy. The service narrowed in on the 6.8mm round, but it has kept how that round is delivered up to industry submissions — they're looking for weight savings so polymer, cased telescope, and hybrid materials such as stainless steel, are all on the table. But while it doesn't get as much attention as the new round, the fire control system is likely as important to the new system. For that, officials are expecting the submission to have three fire control capabilities built into one device — a laser range finder, ballistic computer and disturbed reticle. Those are advancements that put basic infantry shooting on par with sniper equipment. And they're not the end of development. The fire control will have to be compatible with the upcoming Enhanced Night Vision Goggle-Binocular, expected to field near the end of the year and with the Family Weapons Sights-Individual system, which includes thermal capabilities and Rapid Target Acquisition that allows troops to shoot around corners and fire quickly from the hip, if necessary. Those capabilities are on a longer timeline, as tech evolves, mostly to avoid strapping too many accessories onto the weapon. To that end, they've built an open architecture system requirement into the fire control so that future features and hardware can work together, Bohannon said. Originally, the Army was looking to start with a SAW replacement and work the rifle/carbine replacement afterward, but that changed with the most recent prototype notice. Following that notice, Brig. Gen. Anthony Potts, who leads PEO Soldier, told Military Times that the new approach is to develop both along the same path, with the same round, so that designers can find the best fit for ammo in both weapons, much like existing M4s and Squad Automatic Weapons both fire the 5.56mm. The first prototype, which will see test firings of weapons systems in July, resulted in five companies being selected. Those companies are: AAI Corporation Textron Systems FN America LLC (two prototypes) General Dynamics-OTS Inc. PCP Tactical, LLC Sig Sauer, Inc. Though they won the right to participate in that first set of submissions and testing, it doesn't mean any of them has a free pass into this next effort. According to the draft prototype notice from October, once production begins, companies will be expected to build at least 200 weapons per month. Within six months of the award, they need to pump out 2,000 weapons a month within three years for a potential total order of 250,000 weapons systems, both NGSW-R and NGSAR, over a 10-year period. That cashes out to $10 million the first year and an estimated $150 million a year for the higher production rate years. https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2019/01/11/heres-when-the-army-will-pick-three-companies-to-build-the-m16m4-and-saw-replacements-for-soldiers-and-marines