21 septembre 2020 | International, Terrestre
WASHINGTON: The defense industry, Congress, and thinktanks breathed a unanimous sigh of relief at the Army's latest announcement on the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program. In an email to reporters Thursday afternoon, the Army said it would no longer seek to enter its own design team in the OMFV competition, a controversial plan it had suggested in a draft Request For Proposals in July.
“The whole purpose of publishing a Draft RFP was to elicit feedback from our industry partners. We take their feedback seriously,” the Army's armored vehicle modernization director, Brig. Gen. Richard Ross Coffman, told me. “We won't always agree — and must act in the best interest of our soldiers — but we will always listen.”
Thursday's announcement is the latest twist in the decades-long struggle to replace the Reagan-era M2 Bradley, a heavily armed and armored troop carrier. It also suggests the notoriously bureaucratic and inward-looking Army acquisition system is finally starting to take defense contractors seriously when they say something is a bad idea.
“The only surprising thing here is that the Army may have actually taken into account and listened to the over 500 industry comments received,” said Bill Greenwalt of thinktank AEI, a former Hill staffer who spent years reforming military procurement. “I expect they got an earful.”
While the Army's announcement Thursday said it was still “carefully reviewing and analyzing industry comments (over 500 in total) [for] the next few weeks,” the message from industry on the government team seems to have been so strong the service didn't want to wait any longer to take action.
3 septembre 2024 | International, Terrestre
Through the ARPA Engineering Support Services task order, CACI will continue delivering expertise to ensure fleet systems are tested and assessed to maintain a high level of readiness and reliability.
8 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Sebastian Sprenger COLOGNE, Germany — The German Defence Ministry will leave planned air defense investments and other high-profile programs involving U.S. vendors unresolved in the final months of the Merkel government, officials have told lawmakers. A Feb. 3 list of “important” but unfunded programs, as officials wrote, includes several trans-Atlantic defense efforts that have been simmering for some time. As a result, American contractor behemoths Lockheed Martin and Boeing are left to wait until a new government re-litigates Germany's defense acquisition posture sometime after the Sept. 26 election. Lockheed Martin, along with MBDA Deutschland, has been gunning for a contract on the TLVS missile defense program following more than a year of negotiations and several years of German-American co-development. The program's prospects turned dimmer last fall, as new requirements drove up costs. Unsurprisingly, TLVS now officially appears on the to-do list for the next chancellor. Notably, a project aimed at defending against short-range aerial threats, like drones or mortar fire, is also lacking a budget, defense officials wrote to lawmakers. Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer late last year reframed Germany's air defense requirements as needing greater focus on drone threats, as evidenced by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. She said a wholesale evaluation of the entire weapons portfolio would determine the way ahead, including what systems the Bundeswehr needs to counter threats of different sizes from various distances. Whatever happened with the review, it appears it did not spur an appetite to start something new soon. That leaves Germany's fleet of Patriot systems, along with a limited order of counter-drone systems made by Kongsberg and Hensoldt aimed at fulfilling Germany's commitment to NATO for 2023, as the baseline equipment for the time being. Lockheed also must wait for what happens next in the Bundeswehr's heavy transport helicopter program, which is meant to replace the fleet of CH-53G models. The Defence Ministry effectively halted the acquisition process last fall after Lockheed and Boeing went over budget with their custom offers of the CH-53K King Stallion and the CH-47 Chinook, respectively. German defense officials recently requested information from the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency about buying more standard, and presumably cheaper, versions of the desired aircraft instead. In response, Lockheed launched a formal protest, which is now on the docket of the Federal Cartel Office, as newspaper Die Welt first reported. Company officials said they want to get a ruling of whether Berlin walking away from the purchase altogether was in line with fair-competition rules. German acquisition laws make it difficult for companies to protest when the government chooses not to award any contract at the end of a competition, said Christian Scherer, a public procurement expert with the law firm CMS Germany in Cologne. “Generally speaking, you can't force the government to buy anything,” he said. “But bidders might have compensation claims.” Judging offers as economically unfeasible, for example, could qualify as a valid reason for the government to withdraw, Scherer told Defense News. At the same time, there is a legal path if companies suspect abusive implementation of the rules, especially if the government's requirements remain the same, he added. Those rules exist to protect offerers against favoritism and other forms of manipulation. “You can't go ahead and compete the same thing with the intention to award the contract to your preferred bidder.” Finally, Germany's long-term campaign of replacing its fleet of Tornado combat aircraft will remain untouched during the final months of the Merkel era, according to the Defence Ministry. Defense officials last spring settled on a mixed fleet of mostly Eurofighters plus a smaller number of Boeing-made Super Hornets for electronic warfare and nuclear missions. The decision has morphed into something more akin to a mere recommendation that would require years to play out, leading Eurofighter maker Airbus to hold out hope that U.S. manufacturers can be entirely kept out of the business when all is said and done. Tobias Lindner, a Green Party member of the Budget and Appropriations committees in the Bundestag, said the list of unfunded programs is “almost more interesting” than the acquisitions considered doable by the time the Bundestag session ends in late June. With so many big-ticket programs in limbo (15 overall), Kramp-Karrenbauer could move to set priorities and cut needless projects. “Unrealistic announcements and promises weaken trust within the armed forces and with our allies,” Lindner said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2021/02/05/german-defense-ministry-punts-key-us-defense-cooperation-projects-to-the-next-government/
26 décembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
By: Lolita C. Baldor, The Associated Press WASHINGTON — The sooner-than-expected departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattisshifts the focus to President Donald Trump's appointment of an acting Pentagon chief and plans for a permanent replacement. Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan will take over as acting secretary on Jan. 1, Trump announced in a tweet Sunday. He had worked for more than three decades at Boeing Co. and was a senior vice president when he became Pentagon deputy in July 2017. In the new year Trump wants to focus on streamlining purchases at the Pentagon, an issue on which Shanahan has already been working, a White House official said. The official asked not to be identified publicly discussing personnel matters. U.S. officials said they didn't know if Shanahan would be Trump's nominee to replace Mattis. During a lunch with conservative lawmakers Saturday at the White House, Trump discussed his options. They were "not all military," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who was among those attending. Shanahan's biography on the Pentagon's website does not list military experience for the longtime Boeing executive. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Washington, then a master's degree in mechanical engineering as well as an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition to work in Boeing's commercial airplanes programs, Shanahan was vice president and general manager of Boeing Missile Defense Systems and of Boeing Rotorcraft Systems. In a March 2016 report, the Puget Sound Business Journal called Shanahan a Boeing "fix-it" man who was central to getting the 787 Dreamliner on track after production problems in the program's early years. An acting defense secretary is highly unusual. Historically when a secretary has resigned, he has stayed on until a successor is confirmed. For example, when Chuck Hagel was told to resign in November 2014, he stayed in office until Ash Carter was confirmed the following February. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, had been expected to retain his position as Pentagon chief through February. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, not the president, notified Mattis of Trump's decision to put in place Shanahan, said a senior administration official who insisted on anonymity to discuss personnel issues. The sudden change stripped Mattis of any chance to further frame national security policy or smooth rattled relations with allies over the next two months. But U.S. officials said the reaction to Mattis' decision to leave — it sparked shock and dismay on Capitol Hill — annoyed Trump and likely led to pushing Mattis out. "When President Obama ingloriously fired Jim Mattis, I gave him a second chance. Some thought I shouldn't, I thought I should," Trump tweeted Saturday, foreshadowing his displeasure and the Sunday announcement. He also fumed over the media coverage of his Syria withdrawal order, suggesting he should be popular for bringing troops home. "With me, hit hard instead by the Fake News Media. Crazy!" Trump tweeted. A White House official said Trump decided Mattis should leave the administration earlier than planned to avoid a drawn-out transition when someone on hand whom they consider a qualified deputy capable of running the Pentagon in an acting capacity. The official asked not to be identified publicly discussing personnel matters. While Mattis' resignation followed Trump's announcement that he would soon pull all of the approximately 2,000 U.S. troops out of Syria, officials said that the decision was the result of an accumulation of disagreements. In a stunning resignation letter, Mattis made clear he did not see eye to eye with a president who has expressed disdain for NATO and doubts about keeping troops in Asia. Mattis was also unhappy with Trump's order to develop plans to pull out up to half of the 14,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Earlier Sunday, Trump's acting chief of staff said that Trump had known for "quite some time now" that he and Mattis "did not share some of the same philosophies ... have the same world view." Mick Mulvaney told ABC's "This Week" that the president and his defense chief "just could never get on the same page" on Syria, adding that Trump had said since his presidential campaign that "he wanted to get out of Syria." Mulvaney said the president "is entitled to have a secretary of defense who is committed to that same end." Asked whether Trump wanted a Pentagon leader willing to challenge him or someone in lock step with his views, Mulvaney said "a little bit of both." "I've encouraged him to find people who have some overlap with him but don't see the world in lockstep with him," Mulvaney said. Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., joined leading Republicans on foreign affairs in urging Trump to reconsider his decision to withdraw American forces from Syria and called it "a premature and costly mistake." They asked Trump to withhold a final decision for 90 days to allow time to study the impact of the decision, but Mulvaney told ABC that Trump wouldn't change his mind. Just after tweeting the announcement about Shanahan, Trump said he had had "a long and productive call" with Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Trump said they discussed IS, "our mutual involvement in Syria, & the slow & highly coordinated pullout of U.S. troops from the area. After many years they are coming home." Associated Press writers Robert Burns, Darlene Superville and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report. https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/12/24/fix-it-man-shanahan-working-to-streamline-defense-spending