Next-gen fighter not dead, but needs cheaper redesign, Kendall says

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  21 août 2024 | International, Sécurité

  KBR Transforming Cyber Capabilities for Department of Defense with $199M Contract Win

  KBR was awarded this contract under the Department of Defense Information Analysis Center's multiple-award contract vehicle.

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  2 décembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  CEO of Leonardo: A two–way street benefits everyone

  By: Alessandro Profumo Rapid changes are taking place around the world, both at the geopolitical and technological level, which are having an extremely disruptive impact on the defense industry and its customers, namely governments. For its part, technological innovation has reached a pace never seen before. Growing digitalization, big-data processing, robotics, autonomous systems, biotechnology, hypersonics, directed energy: These are just a few examples of innovations that revolutionize industry and governments' approaches to defense and security issues. In some cases, innovations on the commercial side are driving the technological evolution in the defense sector, with increasingly wider applications from a dual-use perspective. There is a real two-way street. The role of government is crucial in developing a long-term investment strategy and identifying the sovereign technologies necessary to maintain a technological advantage over new peers and emerging actors, in symmetric and asymmetric conflicts. Threats to peace and global stability do not solely originate in traditional domains (air, land, sea), but materialize in space and cyberspace, more difficult to protect, as they both lack precise boundaries. Increasing defense spending is a positive signal, especially when coupled with a strong vision and clear objectives aimed at the development of the right capabilities in an international cooperation framework. The national defense industry, as a strategic asset of its own country, must be able to capture technological innovation where it is produced, finding effective ways of accessing new ideas and solutions. Secondly, it must be able to manage the dynamics between long development and production cycles that characterize this sector, and technological innovation's fast pace. The sense of urgency must regard delivering what is needed, when needed, providing the end user with the maximum benefit and anticipating and adapting to changes, while triggering an ever-growing contamination across industries, governments, startups and academia. A deep interconnection between the defense industry and its customers, working in close synergy, facilitates flexible and adaptable structures capable of responding quickly to new and complex emergencies. In this perspective, the closer one works with the customer — throughout the entire product life cycle — the more this reverberates positively at the industry level. The shared awareness rising from this cooperation will enable industry to make wise and focused investment decisions in order to develop products and solutions that best fit future market requirements. Bearing in mind that technology alone is not enough, true success in creating a resilient defense industry also lies in the ability to attract and retain highly specialized human capital as well as involving the supplier base in innovation processes. A shared road map is, therefore, a priority — industry and governments, working together, side by side, committed to building a safer world. Alessandro Profumo is the CEO of Leonardo. https://www.defensenews.com/outlook/2019/12/02/ceo-of-leonardo-a-twoway-street-benefits-everyone

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  11 juin 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  Yokota airmen improve gas mask with 3D printer, potentially saving Air Force $8 million or more

  By SETH ROBSON YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — Tokyo-based airmen used a 3D printer and American ingenuity to modify a standard-issue gas mask into an aircraft oxygen system, potentially saving millions of dollars and improving aircrew safety. The idea of hooking up the M-50 joint-service, general-purpose mask to an aircraft was hatched during brainstorming sessions by airmen from Yokota's 374th Maintenance Squadron and 374th Operations Support Squadron. “We took the mask and added some off-the-shelf parts and some 3D-printed parts and converted it into a piece of equipment that can work in an aircraft,” said Senior Master Sgt. David Siemiet, an aircrew flight equipment superintendent. Gear used now — the Aircrew Eye/Respiratory Protection System, or AERPS — is expensive, heavy and fault prone with long waits for replacement parts, said C-130 Hercules pilot Capt. Matthew Kohl. When the ubiquitous, light and cheap M-50 is connected to an oxygen system, air flows through its chemical filters to the user, whose eyes are protected by goggles, Siemiet said. To build their prototype, the airmen looked at an Army system that hooks soldiers' masks to air blowers to overcome the stifling environment inside a battle tank. The airmen came up with a cap that blocks airflow into one side of the mask and an adaptor that allows it to attach to a hose that can be plugged into an oxygen system. The modification, which the airman call “AERPS Ultra,” uses a few standard parts and two components made on a 3D printer that aircraft materials technology craftsman Sen. Airman David Petrich bought for a few hundred dollars of his own money. It costs only about 75 cents to modify one mask, and the project has the potential to save the Air Force at least $8 million and countless man hours, according to Tech. Sgt. Eric Lundeen, another aircraft materials technology craftsman involved in the project. The M-50 weighs less than a pound, a lot less than the 40 pounds of chemical-protection gear now used by aircrew. Unlike the current system, the lighter masks don't need a power supply that must be hooked to on-board electricity and uses expensive batteries, Petrich said. “You can wear the mask onto the plane and latch in and you are good to go,” he said. The mask modifications can be done on base without the need to pay a contractor, Siemiet added. https://www.stripes.com/news/yokota-airmen-improve-gas-mask-with-3d-printer-potentially-saving-air-force-8-million-or-more-1.531504