Opinion: Is Pressuring Allies To Pay More For Defense Worth The Cost?

Sur le même sujet

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  11 janvier 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  CEO of BAE Systems: Overcoming hardships for a better year

  By: Charles Woodburn The beginning of 2020 was an exciting time for our company; we had just announced we would acquire two high-performing new businesses out of the Raytheon and United Technologies Corporation merger. None of us could have predicted that just weeks later, the majority of our 88,000 employees around the world would be working from home as, like so many companies, we grappled with the unprecedented impact of a global pandemic. Like all businesses, we've experienced challenges this year, especially in the areas that support civil aviation. We've had to adapt and make difficult decisions, but thanks to the actions we've taken to enhance the resilience of our business and the remarkable fortitude of our people, we've continued to deliver on our customers' priorities while keeping our people safe. While COVID-19 clearly caused disruption in the second quarter, since then most of our defense businesses have been operating with well over 90 percent of employees working. The willingness of our customers to maintain cash flow into our businesses also enabled us to support our suppliers — including small and medium-sized companies — through the pandemic. Collaborative partnership with our customers has been essential to the defense industry's ability to press ahead over the past year. It remains essential as we move forward through 2021 and face an uncertain global environment with complex threats. It's only by industry and government working closely, understanding each other, and maintaining trust that we'll be able to innovate quickly to outpace the threats. As governments commit to increased spending on defense in countries such as Australia, the U.K. and several European nations, the defense industry must rise to the challenge. Our sector not only provides critical capability for a nation's security — we deliver real benefits to the economy by sustaining and creating highly skilled jobs through investment in research and technology and through exports. I strongly believe we can have a key role to play in restoring the economies of the countries in which we operate. For our part in 2021, we'll continue to invest in skills and in new technologies that are vital to maintaining our strong positions on next-generation capabilities across the air, maritime, land and cyber domains. In the U.S. market, we continue to stay well-aligned to the U.S. National Defense Strategy and are investing heavily in modernizing facilities and using new technologies. For example, we're deploying new virtual manufacturing and robotic welding in our combat vehicle production. While the new administration's priorities are not yet clear, we expect to stay well-aligned, given our work focused on combat vehicles, precision-guided munitions, naval ship repair and modernization, electronic warfare, hypersonics, space resilience, and security. In the U.K., the announcement of increased funding for the Ministry of Defence provides welcome stability. The submission of the outline business case for Tempest at the end of 2020 was another significant step in this hugely exciting project to deliver a next-generation future combat air system. Working with our partners and supply chain, we're using cutting-edge technologies to transform how we design, develop and manufacture, helping to reduce time and cost. We'll ramp up the number of people we have working on the program through 2021, including apprentices and graduates, as part of our commitment to recruit 1,250 trainees across the U.K., despite the pandemic. In Australia, we're excited to have begun work on the prototype for the Hunter-class frigate — an Australian version of the U.K.'s Type 26. We recently recruited the 1,000th Hunter employee and expect to recruit up to 1,000 more people, including apprentices and graduates, in 2021 as the program continues to ramp up. Working with our partners and customer, we're supporting Australia to develop its sovereign defense capability to deliver on the country's recently published 10-year defense strategy. It's been a challenging year of trying to stay connected while maintaining physical distance; the inability to travel to our businesses around the world and meet our people and our customers is something I've found frustrating at times. But if we continue working closely with our partners to use the lessons we've learned in 2020, particularly regarding our agility, resilience and efficiency, this industry can play an increasingly important role in restoring our battered economies, while keeping citizens safe and economies prosperous. Charles Woodburn is the CEO of BAE Systems. https://www.defensenews.com/outlook/2021/01/11/ceo-of-bae-systems-overcoming-hardships-for-a-better-year/

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  21 septembre 2022 | International, Naval

  Ship repair delays increased in 2022 due to labor, material challenges

  Just 36% of ship availabilities will finish on time this year despite a pair of initiatives meant to boost performance at shipyards.

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  21 mai 2020 | International, Naval

  Shipbuilding suppliers need more than market forces to stay afloat

  By: Bryan Clark and Timothy A. Walton The U.S. Navy's award this month of the contract for its new class of frigates starts the very necessary process of rebalancing the U.S. surface fleet, but the competition also highlighted the U.S. shipbuilding-industrial base's increasing fragility. If they lost, two of the four shipyards bidding on the frigate were at risk of either going out of business or joining the underemployed ranks of U.S. commercial shipbuilders. Due to specialization, only one or two yards construct each class of Navy combat ship with workforces, equipment, and infrastructure that would be expensive and difficult to adapt. A decision on any single ship class, as with the frigate, can shut down a shipyard and send its workers to the unemployment line. Specialization is also a problem when orders increase. The Navy's two submarine shipyards, General Dynamics Electric Boat and Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News division, shrank the time needed to build subs by 20 percent during the past decade while increasing production to two per year. The rising sophistication of Virginia-class submarines has now reversed this trend, however, and submarine builders' challenges are only increasing. They recently started a new contract to build up to 10 of the larger Block V Virginia submarines and are in negotiation with the Navy on a block-buy contract for the first two Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. Supplier challenges abound U.S. shipbuilders may be fragile, but their suppliers are on life support. After decades of being whipsawed by changes to shipbuilding plans and budget uncertainty, a shrinking number of suppliers are able and willing to stay in business. The Navy's recent initiatives to improve supplier production capacity and resilience don't go far enough to address its rising dependence on sole-source suppliers, which now provide more than 75 percent of submarine parts. For example, when problems with Columbia missile tubes led the Navy to seek new suppliers, it replaced the existing, sole source — BWXT — with another — General Dynamics — that will assemble tubes at the same facilities that are constructing parts for the Virginia and Columbia submarines. Last year, the Trump administration used the Defense Production Act to establish new suppliers for military missile fuel. The Navy should build on this effort to identify sole-source items for which an additional supplier is appropriate. In selecting additional suppliers, the Navy should prioritize attributes other than cost. Sole-source items by definition are important enough to justify seeking out or creating a single supplier rather than adapting the ship's design to use an existing item. Therefore, the Navy should emphasize the provider's track record in conducting similar or other challenging engineering; its ability to adjust to what will likely be variable demand and changing specifications; and the likelihood of quality production that avoids rework. Planning for resiliency The Department of Defense could help address the shipbuilding-industrial base's fragility with its current study of the number and mix of ships needed in the future fleet. Although the primary goal of this analysis should be determining the most effective fleet possible within likely budget constraints, it must also ensure the industrial base can build and sustain the future Navy. Industrial base considerations are not new to Navy force structure planning. During the last decade, the Navy or Congress added amphibious ships, submarines, destroyers and auxiliary vessels to maintain hot production lines or keep a shipyard afloat until the next order. Each of the Navy's new combatant ships are expected to cost more than $1 billion to build, constraining the Navy's ability to spread ship construction to other qualified shipyards to fill production gaps or extend classes to keep a shipyard in operation. The Navy could better support shipbuilders by rebalancing its fleet architecture to increase the number of smaller vessels such as corvettes or tank landing ships, and reduce the number of larger destroyers and amphibious warships. Smaller, less-expensive ships could be built in larger numbers per year, providing more flexibility in shipbuilding plans to stabilize the workload for shipbuilders and providing more scalability to align shipbuilding expenditures with changing budgets. Smaller ships could also be built at a wider range of shipyards, including those that only build commercial vessels and noncombatant government ships like Coast Guard cutters and oceanographic research vessels. These “dual-use” shipbuilders suffer today from a lack of coordination between commercial and government shipbuilding, which creates a feast-or-famine cycle of orders. The Navy and nation depend on a healthy shipbuilding-industrial base. To foster the industrial base in the face of natural and man-made challenges, the Navy should change its fleet design and shipbuilding plans, while investing to establish and qualify new suppliers. Without deliberate action, the U.S. shipbuilding industry will become increasingly fragile, limiting the Navy's ability to build the ships it needs and respond when today's competitions turn to conflict. Bryan Clark is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where Timothy A. Walton is a fellow. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/05/20/shipbuilding-suppliers-need-more-than-market-forces-to-stay-afloat/