3 décembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Egypt unveils locally made drones at EDEX 2021
The show was scheduled to take place in 2020 but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
25 juin 2019 | International, Naval
Navy Refining How Data Analytics Could Predict Ship Maintenance Needs
By: Ben Werner
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Extending the lifespans of existing ships using data-driven maintenance efforts is the best strategy for achieving a 355- ship navy, said the Naval Sea Systems Command chief engineer.
The key to maintaining ships and enabling the Navy to extend their lifespans is data analytics, Rear Adm. Lorin Selby, the chief engineer and deputy commander of ship design, integration and naval engineering at NAVSEA, said Thursday at the American Society of Naval Engineers' annual Technology, Systems & Ship symposium.
“I have ships with a number of sensors on them, measuring things like reduction gears, showering components, turbines, generators, water jets, air conditioning plants, high packs, a number of components, and we're actually pulling data off those ships, in data acquisition systems,” Selby said.
At the Naval Surface Warfare Center Philadelphia Division, Selby's team is analyzing data gleaned from smaller ship component operations to determine how often such components need servicing, oil changes, filter changes, other maintenance actions and replacement. The process is called condition-based maintenance plus (CBM+), and Selby wants CBM to drive improvements in maintaining ships.
“That's one of the things we're doing to get after utilizing the technology we have today to operate the ships we have today more efficiently and more effectively,” Selby said.
The Navy has dabbled with CBM for years. A 2008 Department of Defense Conditions Based Maintenance Plus guidebook mentions NAVSEA efforts. However, two years ago at the ASNE TSS symposium, NAVSEA Commander Vice Adm. Tom Moore told USNI News that the Navy's use of CBM had perhaps gone too far and was disrupting the shipyards' ability to plan for large maintenance jobs properly.
During previous attempts at incorporating CBM, there was a thought that, if major efforts like refurbishing tanks were only done when needed, rather than on a predetermined timetable, the Navy could avoid spending time and money on work ahead of need. However, that also meant that shipyards wouldn't have a clear work package before a ship showed up at the pier, adding uncertainty and, ultimately, more time and cost into the maintenance availability.
This time around, Selby sees condition-based maintenance as a way to address smaller maintenance items in such a way that data analysis points a ship crew to components that are experiencing minor performance issues or otherwise showing signs they are about to fail before the failure actually occurs.
This summer, a pilot program using enterprise remote monitoring will occur on an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, he said. Data collected will be sent for analysis, and operators will learn how to use the data to understand how their systems are performing and if maintenance or repairs are needed.
Selby wants to have a system of apps the Navy can use to collect data from ship components, analyze the data, share it with operators and schedule work. He wants to hold a competition for app developers to create apps the Navy will test for use in the fleet.
Describing his vision, Selby said, “the systems that will be monitoring, say the turbine; it will tell the operators when a work procedure has to be performed and it will also then tap into the work package side of the house and generate a work package that gets sent to the ship, to the work center, to do the work. And if there's a part involved, it will be able to pull a part from the supply system.”
Testing is occurring now, but Selby concedes there are some obstacles the Navy has to overcome before large-scale deployment. The Navy is struggling with how to transmit data securely, something Selby discussed during an earlier session at the symposium. The data also has to be secured.
“The performance of any given asset is something we want to hold close. So I think what you have to do is you have to architect this from kind of the get-go with that kind of security mindset in mind,” Selby said. “You can harvest that data and you could potentially discover vulnerabilities, so you have to protect that. That's part of my project: as I do this, we're bringing that security aspect into the program.”
Extending the lifespan of the Navy's current fleet is essential if the Navy is going to grow to 355-ships, Moore said during his keynote address after Selby spoke Thursday. The Navy, military planners at the Pentagon, the White House and lawmakers are all anxious to reach 355 ships as soon as possible because Moore said current forces are stretched too thin.
“We in the Navy, we don't have enough forces to go everywhere we need to go, and we have a pretty fragile mix of ships, so that when we miss an availability coming out on time, or we don't build something to the schedule they're supposed to build to, there are real-world consequences to that,” Moore said.
The true determining factor of whether a ship's lifespan can be extended, Moore said, is the platform's flexibility. The Arleigh Burke-class is the Navy's workhorse today because, during the past 30 years, the Navy has successfully updated its operating systems. Moving forward, Moore said extending the life of the ships in this class means back-fitting many of the older Flight I and Flight II with a scaled-back version of the AN/SPY-6(V) Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) to keep these ships relevant to current and future mission needs.
“If you're willing to do the maintenance on the ships, from a hull and mechanical perspective, you absolutely can keep them longer,” Moore said. “The issue is really not can you keep them 50 years; the issue is can they maintain combat relevance. If they can maintain combat relevance, we know we can keep them longer.”
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12 juin 2020 | International, C4ISR
Des missions sans GPS pour l'armée de l'Air gr'ce à Sodern et Safran E&D
DEFENSE Des missions sans GPS pour l'armée de l'Air gr'ce à Sodern et Safran E&D Sodern, filiale d'ArianeGroup et leader mondial des viseurs d'étoiles pour satellites, et Safran Electronics & Defense, filiale de Safran, développent un système de visée stellaire diurne et nocturne pour avions militaires. Ce système permettra aux forces armées françaises de s'affranchir de toute dépendance au GNSS (GPS et Galileo), qui pourrait être brouillé ou leurré lors de combat à haute intensité. «La France est pionnière de cette technologie et pourrait être, à terme, la première nation disposant d'une telle capacité opérationnelle», explique Jean-Marc Espinasse, le directeur de la stratégie et de l'innovation chez Sodern, dans La Tribune. «On croit vraiment à son apport capacitaire, qui va donner une vraie supériorité opérationnelle à nos forces lors de combat à haute intensité», ajoute-t-il. Sélectionnés en 2016 par la DGA et par l'Agence d'Innovation Défense (AID), les deux entreprises ont mis au point un démonstrateur, qui fonctionne déjà au sol, après une campagne d'essais réalisée fin 2019. Une campagne d'essais en vol est prévue à l'automne. Le système pourrait être opérationnel sur un avion de l'armée française (Rafale, A400M, MRTT...) d'ici à cinq ans, selon Jean-Marc Espinasse. Outre les avions, d'autres porteurs comme les navires, les drones voire les véhicules terrestres sont envisageables. La Tribune et Air & Cosmos du 12 juin
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29 avril 2020 | International, Naval
Navy Readies To Buy New Frigates As Industrial Base Wobbles
The Navy will recompete the program after the first 10 ships are under contract, leading to a new award and another bite at the apple for the bidders who lost out the first time around. By PAUL MCLEARY WASHINGTON: The Navy will award the first contract for an ambitious new class of frigates in the coming days, several sources with knowledge of the plan said, speeding up a program that wasn't slated to get underway until later this year. After the first award for ten ships, the Navy will launch a new competition for the next ten, possibly splitting the class and giving other shipbuilders another bite at the apple. Moving forward the buy of the first of what should be 20 frigates serves more than one purpose. It locks in place one of the service's top priorities while also pushing work to the winning shipbuilder months ahead of the original schedule, just as the Pentagon worries about the cratering of global manufacturing supply chains as a result to the COVID-19 pandemic. The country's largest shipbuilders are competing for the $1.2 billion first ship, with the price settling in at a projected $900 to $950 million per ship after that. In the running are Huntington Ingalls Industries, which is thought to be offering a more lethal version of its national security cutter. There's also a joint effort between Navantia and General Dynamics Bath Iron Works with a version of its F-100 design already in use by the Spanish navy. Fincantieri Marinette Marine is offering a version of its FREMM frigate in use by the Italian navy. Finally, Austal is trying with a version of its aluminum trimaran Littoral Combat Ship. Fincantieri and Lockheed also make a version of the LCS, but decided not to submit it to the competition. Hanging over any new start shipbuilding program however is the specter of the long-troubled LCS, a vessel still working to find a role and mission within the fleet. Despite its problems, the Navy has ordered 38 of them but is walking away from the class to pursue the new frigate. Unveiling the fiscal 2021 budget earlier this year, Rear Adm. Randy Crites, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, acknowledged “we don't want to have a repeat of some of the lessons of LCS where we got going too fast,” on the frigate effort, despite speeding up the initial award. Plans call for the FFG(X) to be a small, multi-mission ship loaded out with the Aegis combat system, 32 vertical launch cells and the new SPY-6 radar system. The ship will be smaller than the Arleigh Burke destroyer, the Navy's current workhorse, but outfitted with more power generation capabilities and advanced electronic warfare systems, along with radar and anti-submarine warfare gear. Navy spokesman Capt. Danny Hernandez said in an email that the frigate “will provide increased range, endurance and survivability over previous small surface combatants,” as well as improvements in surface warfare, electromagnetic maneuver warfare and air warfare, “with design flexibility for future growth.” That's a lot of capability to fit in a relatively small package at less than $1 billion per ship. But the Navy's top brass and Defense Secretary Mark Esper have declared the fleet needs to be faster, lighter, more maneuverable and more numerous to meet the challenges of modern Chinese and Russian navies. “It's clear they need fewer large surface combatants and more smaller surface combatants,” a congressional source told me. “But whether the frigate is considered by the Secretary of Defense as being small enough” is an open question. Getting the frigate in place early will provide some stability in an uncertain time for the Navy and its industrial base. The service's long-term plans were thrown into flux in February when Secretary Mark Esper held up the release of the Navy's 30-year shipbuilding plan and the long-awaited Integrated Force Structure Assessment (INFSA), after he found the Navy's draft wanting. He assigned Deputy Defense Secretary David Norquist to lead a group through a months-long review of the plans before making them public this summer. In a letter to the House Armed Services Committee, Esper said he wants the force to grow larger than the much-discussed 355 ship fleet Navy leaders have long aspired to, with many of those new ships being smaller than the ones currently at sea, and many others unmanned. “Three months ago, I would have said, ‘oh yeah they're gonna want to build more than 20'” frigates,” the congressional source said. “But now with the intervention of the Secretary of Defense it's unclear. Maybe he's fine with just 20, and he wants them to build a lot more of something that's considerably smaller still.” Two of the shipbuilders competing, Fincantieri in Wisconsin and Austal in Alabama have a lot riding on the contract, as their big-ticket work on LCS runs out in coming years. Huntington's yards are somewhat protected because it is the only shipbuilder in America capable of building aircraft carriers, and has two more Ford-class big decks to build over the next decade, along with large amphibious ships. Lawmakers in Wisconsin, well aware of what's at stake, sent a letter to President Trump earlier this year promoting the Fincantieri Marinette Marine shipyard as best suited for the work. “We have witnessed what the loss of opportunity does to the Midwest,” the letter said. “When industry departs, so does hope.” Wrapping up the pitch for close to $20 billion worth of work over the 20 ship contract, the senators concluded by telling the president his “leadership and attention to this opportunity is vital.” There is no indication that any political weight is being put on the Navy in awarding the contract, but in an election year, with an industrial base staggering through supply chain meltdowns, the frigate contract is looming large. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/04/navy-readies-to-buy-new-frigates-as-industrial-base-wobbles/