16 juillet 2018 | International, Aérospatial
By: Valerie Insinna
LONDON — The Pentagon and Lockheed Martin have reached a handshake deal for the eleventh batch of F-35 joint strike fighters, the Pentagon's top acquisistion official confirmed July 15.
The lot 11 order will be the largest so far for the F-35 program, purchasing 141 jets for U.S. and international customers.
"The JPO and Lockheed Martin have made progress and are in the final stages of negotiation on the Lot 11 production contract,” said Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment, in a statement.
“We have a handshake agreement which symbolizes the Department of Defense's commitment to not only equip our warfighters with the world's greatest fifth generation aircraft, but it also represents great value to the U.S. taxpayers, our allies and international partners. With each production lot, the F-35 unit recurring flyaway costs continue to come down across the board.”
Neither the Defense Department nor Lockheed disclosed either the total contract value nor the unit costs of the latest order, but a Lockheed spokesperson said the company remains on track to decrease the unit cost of an F-35A conventional takeoff and landing model — the most widely used variant — to $80 million by 2020.
In a statement, the Lockheed spokesperson stated that the total contract value and price per copy would be released once the contract was finalized, but the “unit price for all three F-35 variants went down significantly in the latest negotiation, demonstrating the program's continued progress, maturity and cost reduction.”
A contract for the tenth lot of low rate initial production (LRIP) F-35s, as announced in February 2017, lowered the price of an F-35A to $94.6 million — the first time any version of the joint strike fighter had been sold for less than $100 million. The F-35B jump-jet model used by the U.S. Marine Corps came in at $122.8 million, while the F-35C carrier version sat at $121.8 million.
Lockheed and the Pentagon took longer to reach a final contract agreement than either party would have liked, as the department's F-35 Joint Program Office had hoped to finalize an LRIP 11 contract last year. However, the deal could represent a sea change for the relationship, which soured considerably during the LRIP 9 and 10 negotiations.
After months of LRIP 9 negotiations went nowhere, the JPO in 2016 forced Lockheed Martin to abide by a unilateral contract action, which allowed the Pentagon to set the price of an aircraft and Lockheed's fee without input from the company.
Then, F-35 costs came under fire from President Donald Trump, who publicly lambasted the program and positioned Boeing's Super Hornet as an alternative. The pressure helped the Pentagon and Lockheed make a deal on LRIP 10 in February 2017, with unit costs reduced by about 7.5 percent when compared with the ninth batch of jets.
The announcement of the today's deal follows a $2 billion contract award made to Pratt & Whitney in May for the eleventh batch of F-35 engines. Pratt manufactures the F135 engine used in every version of the jet.
Going forward, Lockheed and the Pentagon will negotiate lots 12, 13 and 14 together as part of a block buy that will initially encompass international orders but could also accommodate the U.S. services as early as lot 13.
The Lockheed spokesman stated that the LRIP 11 deal “along with the technical stability of the aircraft, puts us on a great path to negotiate Lots 12, 13 and 14 as a Block Buy, which will generate additional savings for our customers.”
2 novembre 2023 | International, Terrestre
A group of senior Republicans in the U.S. Congress urged President Joe Biden to send longer-range missiles to Ukraine, in a show of continued support for Kyiv among U.S. lawmakers despite pushback from some conservatives against more aid.
28 juillet 2020 | International, C4ISR
Mark Pomerleau America's adversaries have targeted the military's weaknesses via information warfare in recent years and as a result the Department of Defense has made a series of moves to reorganize and better defend against such threats. While each service is undertaking a slightly different approach toward information warfare, Defense officials have said there is a broad buy-in to a larger vision of how to fuse capabilities and better prepare to fight. Collectively, they show the breadth of the movement. Here are several ongoing efforts within the services and the Pentagon underway. Navy Upon assuming the service's top officer in December, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday issued a fragmentary order outlining a variety of tasks for the Navy. Included in this order was a direction that the Navy will pilot a dedicated information warfare cell within a maritime operations center at Large Scale Exercise 2020 to more effectively execute space, electronic warfare, information operations and special operations forces into all-domain operations. Large Scale Exercise has been put on hold until next year due to the ongoing pandemic. Gilday explained that the results from the exercise will refined the requirements and timeline for these IW cells in all fleet maritime operations centers as part of the budget for 2022. Gilday also required the Navy to develop a plan to field small tactical cyber teams for fleet cyber commanders, however, that also is still forthcoming. Army The Army's primary arm for cyber operations has been working to reorganize and change its name. Lt. Gen. Stephen Fogarty in August announced Army Cyber Command intended to change its name to Army Information Warfare Command. Similar comments came from Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville. It is still unclear when the official name change will take place. The tactical manifestation of this name change will exist with the 915th Cyber Warfare Battalion, a relatively new unit consisting of 12 teams that support brigade combat teams or other tactical formations. These “fly away” teams, as some officials call them, would help plan tactical cyber operations for commanders in theater and unilaterally conduct missions in coordination with forces in the field. The Army has already activated its first two companies under the 915th in the last year and plans to create another within the next year. On the capability side, the Army is continuing to field its first organic brigade information warfare capabilities. These include the Multi-Function Electronic Warfare Air Large, the first organic bridge aerial electronic attack asset, which is also capable of cyberattacks pod mounted on a MQ-1C Gray Eagle drone, as well as the Terrestrial Layer System Large, the first ground based integrated signals intelligence, electronic warfare and cyber platform. The Army recently awarded a development contract to Lockheed Martin for MFEW and plans to equip units in 2022. The TLS is currently in the prototyping phase with two companies competing for the contract. The Army aims to equip units in 2022 as well. Air Force In October, the Air Force created its first information warfare command in 16th Air Force, which combined 24th Air Force and 25th Air Force. It now fuses cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance, information operations and weather together under one commander. While the new entity reached fully operational capability this month, there is still more work to be done in getting the right personnel in place and continuing to integrate the disparate entities that existed separately before. Specifically, 16th Air Force's commander Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh said an information warfare cell that will be tied closely with the air components at European and Indo-Pacific Command has been assigned but that leaders still need to hire personnel. Additionally, he noted during a July 15 event hosted by the Mitchell Institute that the 16th will be partnering with their parent entity Air Combat Command to create a spectrum warfare wing. Marine Corps The Marines decided to reorganize their Marine Expeditionary Force headquarters nearly four years ago and create the MEF Information Groups (MIGs). These entities centralize cyber, electronic warfare, intelligence and information operations into tactical maneuver formations. These forces are still participating in exercises to better refine structures and concepts. Pentagon Congress in last year's defense policy bill directed the Department of Defense to designate a principal information operations adviser. https://www.c4isrnet.com/smr/information-warfare/2020/07/26/how-the-defense-department-is-reorganizing-for-information-warfare/
21 août 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
CERT-UA warns of new phishing attacks by Vermin hackers, using POW images to spread SPECTR and FIRMACHAGENT malware targeting Ukrainian devices.