18 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
Agreement positions company for work on next generation composite manufacturing technology
DULLES, Va. – Oct. 16, 2018 – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE: NOC) announced today it has finalized a Cooperation and Research Agreement to work closely with Airbus on the Wing of Tomorrow program. The three-year agreement expands the current Northrop Grumman relationship with Airbus and explores complex composite wing stiffener forming automation with out-of-autoclave material systems through an investment in equipment, test articles and engineering support. This relationship positions Northrop Grumman for future potential high-rate production opportunities.
“This agreement builds on Northrop Grumman's valuable working relationship with Airbus and its partners. Our work with Airbus is an important component of growth in the commercial aerospace structures business,” said Wendy Williams, vice president and general manager, aerospace structures, Northrop Grumman. “We are excited about the advanced composite manufacturing technology being developed to support the Wing of Tomorrow concept, and our team is eager to continue our long-term relationship with Airbus on their future endeavors.”
Northrop Grumman is currently producing composite fuselage stringers and frames for the Airbus A350 XWB -900 and -1000 variants at its state-of-the-art Aircraft Commercial Center of Excellence facility in Clearfield, Utah. The company has successfully delivered more than 200,000 Airbus A350 parts since the inception of the program.
Northrop Grumman's proprietary automated stiffener forming process has been instrumental in the development and manufacture of high-rate production composite stringers and frames that are extremely high quality, affordable and dimensionally precise. This technology will be evolved to the new material systems, geometries and processing needs of the future while maintaining the superior benefits of a highly automated production process.
The Airbus Wing of Tomorrow program will address future aggressive aircraft production rates and the requirement for wings to be made faster and more affordably. The program will explore the best materials, manufacturing and assembly techniques, as well as new technologies in aerodynamics and wing architecture.
New material experimentation represents a major part of the program, and lower-cost composite technologies currently being pursued could enable wing components to be produced with significantly reduced equipment and tooling costs, along with enabling a faster production cycle. Increased use of composite materials also opens up new possibilities in terms of wing configuration and construction.
Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions in autonomous systems, cyber, C4ISR, space, strike, and logistics and modernization to customers worldwide. Please visit news.northropgrumman.com and follow us on Twitter, @NGCNews, for more information.
15 mai 2024 | International, Terrestre
The company partnered with Brightline Interactive to develop, demonstrate, and deploy a next-generation training ecosystem that utilizes spatial computing and AI workflows to create a virtual training environment.
2 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Sean Kennedy The Biden administration has the opportunity to institute reforms in several crucial areas at the Department of Defense. First and foremost, it should eliminate the overseas contingency operations account. The continued justification for the OCO has reached the stage of parody. Originally intended for emergency spending in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the account has transitioned into a slush fund designed to inflate spending at the DoD far above the baseline budget and for purposes unrelated to foreign wars. In fiscal 2015, approximately 50 percent of OCO funding was for nonemergency items. An August 2019 Congressional Budget Office report noted that approximately 85 percent of funding for the OCO in FY20 and FY21 “is designated for base-budget and ‘enduring' activities,” funding maintenance in support of foreign operations that will continue regardless of force size. OCO spending has long outpaced the military's presence in combat zones. In FY08, the U.S. deployed an average of 187,000 troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. OCO spending topped $187 billion that year, equating to $1 million per service member. The DoD currently has approximately 5,000 troops stationed in these countries, meaning the $70.7 billion in OCO spending in FY20 equates to $14.1 million in funding per service member — more than 14 times the amount in FY08. With President Joe Biden unlikely to substantially increase the military's footprint in Afghanistan and Iraq, outsized OCO spending will continue in FY21 and beyond, barring reform. The DoD has received approximately $2 trillion from the OCO since 2001. Were it considered to be a federal agency, the FY20 OCO funding would make it the fourth largest, dwarfing spending at all other agencies except the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, and Veterans Affairs. The incoming administration must also expand efforts to make DoD finances more transparent and accountable. The bookkeeping is so abysmal that areas within the DoD have been on the Government Accountability Office's list of programs at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse and mismanagement since 1995. The financial black hole is nowhere more evident than in the DoD's inability to pass a clean audit, unlike every other federal agency. On Nov. 16, 2020, the Pentagon announced that for the third straight year it failed its financial review. Progress has been incremental, with seven of 24 DoD agencies thus far producing clean audits. However, the DoD estimates that it will not be able to pass an audit before 2027, or 37 years after it was required to do so by law. The DoD must also determine the replacement mechanism for the chief management officer position, which was the No. 3 civilian slot until it was eliminated in the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act. Despite identifying $22.3 billion in savings between FY18 and FY21, legislators bowed to Pentagon pressure, distributing the duties and responsibilities of the role to various existing positions with far less authority. The acquisition side is also a mess, including several infamous procurement disasters that epitomize the Pentagon's systemic problems. The foremost example is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. The program has been under continuous development since the contract was awarded in 2001, and has encountered innumerable delays and cost overruns. Total acquisition costs now exceed $428 billion, nearly double the initial estimate of $233 billion. The total costs for the F-35 are estimated to reach $1.727 trillion over the lifetime of the program. On Jan. 14, 2021, then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller labeled the Joint Strike Fighter a “piece of sh*t.” Enough said. Many of the problems with the F-35 program can be traced to the decision to develop and procure the Joint Strike Fighter simultaneously. Whenever problems have been identified, contractors needed to go back and make changes to aircraft that were already assembled, adding to overall costs. Of course none of this has stopped the Pentagon from asking for Joint Strike Fighter funding, and members of Congress from supplying it, oftentimes exceeding the request from the DoD. This trend continued in FY20, when legislators added $2.1 billion in earmarks to fund the acquisition of 22 Joint Strike Fighters beyond the amount requested by the Pentagon, bringing the total amount of earmarks for the program to $8.9 billion since FY01. Lastly, the Biden administration would do well to introduce some stability into Pentagon leadership. Every defense secretary brings to the job different priorities for the government's largest bureaucracy. President Donald Trump burned through two confirmed and four acting secretaries, the most for any administration. President Biden should endeavor to reverse this churn. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2021/02/01/these-five-items-should-top-bidens-defense-priorities/
3 février 2022 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
DÉFENSE Taxonomie : l'industrie de la défense redoute d'être stigmatisée Avec un chiffre d'affaires s'élevant à près de 27 Md€, la filière française de la défense s'inquiète de la possibilité de ne pas être intégrée dans la taxonomie verte. Et les travaux préparatoires à la mise en place d'une seconde taxonomie dite « sociale » n'intègrent pas non plus cette industrie. « Nous nous interrogeons sur la façon dont les acteurs financiers interpréteront ces taxonomies et à son impact, avec des risques d'assèchement des financements vers la filière et des difficultés pour recruter », s'inquiète Guillaume Muesser, Directeur des Affaires Economiques et de Défense du GIFAS. Un risque qui est déjà une réalité. « Depuis deux ans (...), nos adhérents, issus de 17 pays européens nous alertent sur un mouvement en cours au sein des établissements financiers, de plus en plus nombreux à exclure la défense de la liste de leurs investissements », précise Jan Pie, secrétaire général de l'Association des industries européennes aérospatiales et défense (ASD). Sous pression d'ONG et de l'opinion publique, la Deutsche Bank a ainsi décidé d'exclure l'industrie de défense de ses investissements. « Nous sommes inquiets d'une exclusion qui se ferait sur des critères philosophiques, culturels voire idéologiques », affirme Pascal Bouchiat, directeur général finance de Thales. L'inquiétude grandit car le risque d'affaiblissement d'une des industries où l'Europe est encore au meilleur niveau mondial est réel. La filière européenne emploie plus de 462 000 salariés très qualifiés et réalise quelque 120 Md€ de ventes. « Sans défense, il n'y a pas de sécurité ni de souveraineté et donc pas de durabilité », résume Éric Béranger, président du comité défense au sein du Conseil des Industries de Défense Françaises (CIDEF) et patron du missilier MBDA. Le Figaro du 3 février