Pentagon’s AI office rebooting global experiments for JADC2

Sur le même sujet

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  3 juin 2021 | International, Terrestre

  Rheinmetall delivers first batch of Boxer scouting vehicles to Australia

  Twenty-five vehicles done, 106 to go for the combat reconnaissance version of Australia's future Boxer fleet.

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  28 août 2018 | International, Aérospatial, Terrestre

  Can Army Futures Command Overcome Decades Of Dysfunction?

  By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. ARMY S&T CONFERENCE: How broken is the procurement system the new Army Futures Command was created to fix? It's not just the billions wasted on cancelled weapons programs. It's also the months wasted because, until now, there has not been one commander who can crack feuding bureaucrats' heads together and make them stop bickering over, literally, inches. “I have not always been an Army Futures Command fan,” retired Lt. Gen. Tom Spoehr told the National Defense Industrial Association conference here. But as he thought about his own decades in Army acquisition, he's come around. How bad could things get? When he was working in the Army resourcing office (staff section G-8), Spoehr recalled, the Army signals school at Fort Gordon wanted a new radio test kit that could fit in a six-inch cargo pocket. The radio procurement programmanager, part of an entirely separate organization, reported back there was nothing on the market under eight inches. The requirements office insisted on sixinches, the acquisition office insisted they had no money to develop something smaller than the existing eight-inchers, and memos shot back and forth for months. At last, Spoehr warned both sides that if they didn't come to some agreement, he'd kill the funding. Suddenly Fort Gordon rewrote the requirement from “fit in a cargo pocket” to “cargo pouch” and the procurement people could go buy an eight-inch kit. That kind of disconnected dithering is what Army Futures Command is intended to prevent. “I had the money, but nobody really had control of all of this,” Spoehr said. As a result, he said, “we probably spent six months trading memos back and forth on the size of the radio frequency test kit.” Multiplying that by thousands of requirements over hundreds of systems, and the wasted time and money gets pretty bad. But what's often worse is when the requirements are unrealistic and no one pushes back. Most notoriously ,Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki demanded easily airlifted Future Combat Systems vehicles that weighed less than 20 tons but had the combat power of a 60-ton M1 Abrams tank. The designs eventually grew to 26 tons, and the performance requirements came down, but by then FCS had lost the confidence of both Congress and Defense Secretary Bob Gates, who canceled it in 2009. It was another casualty of overly ambitious requirements drawn up by staff officers in isolation from the people who'd actually have to build them. Army Futures Command is structured to force those two groups to talk to each other from the start. Full article: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/can-army-futures-command-overcome-decades-of-dysfunction

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  19 février 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  TERMA AND SCANDINAVIAN AVIONICS SECURE F-35 SUSTAINMENT CONTRACT

  Avionics Test Center Denmark (ATCD) formed by Terma and Scandinavian Avionics in collaboration with the U.S. will be responsible for repair and maintenance globally of avionics components. Copenhagen, Monday 18 February 2019 - U.S. Department of Defense F-35 Joint Program Office announced Avionics Test Center Denmark to be responsible for maintenance of avionics (16 components) for the F-35 fighter aircraft. During the period of 2021-2025 Avionics Test Center Denmark (ATCD) formed by Terma and Scandinavian Avionics in collaboration with the U.S. will be responsible for repair and maintenance globally of avionics components. “We are very proud to be selected by the F-35 program to play an essential role in the global F-35 sustainment network. It is a great day for both Terma and for Danish industry since the perspectives for Denmark now being part of the F-35 operational setup in decades to come are huge,” said Mr. Lars Hedemann Hilligsøe, Senior Vice President, Terma Support and Services. From 2025 ATCD will be responsible for regional repair and maintenance of avionics components within Europe. ATCD's sustainment work will take place in Denmark. Major General Henrik R. Lundstein, Director of the Fighter Aircraft Program in Danish Ministry of Defence Acquisition and Logistics Organization (DALO) says: "It is very satisfying that the Danish Defence' close collaboration with the industrial consortium consisting of Scandinavian Avionics and Terma has resulted in Danish industry now being awarded the first major F-35 maintenance contract. This shows that the Danish defense industry is able to compete with the largest companies in the market on competitive terms, i.e. price, time, delivery security, and quality.” In April 2018, the Danish companies Terma and Scandinavian Avionics submitted a joint response, to a so-called Request for Information (RFI), on maintenance of F-35 components. For this purpose, the two companies established Avionics Test Center Denmark, which has now been selected to carry out the task. The RFI that ATCD has won parts of is the second procurement of F-35 components repair to be published. The initial RFI (Tier 1) covers – together with the RFI for Tier 2 – approx. 60% of all the F-35 components published for repair. The remaining approx. 40% will be published among the F-35 Partnership countries later this year and in 2020. Danish Industrial Partnership Within the framework of the Industrial Partnership, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Program represented by the Danish Ministry of Defence has been supporting the answers from ATCD. The Industrial Partnership was established as part of Denmark's procurement of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters. The Partnership consists of The Confederation of Danish Industry, The Ministry of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs, The Danish Ministry of Defence, and The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark with the purpose of strengthening the opportunity for Danish companies to win orders for production and repair of F-35 and to open doors to further high technology or defense related exports to the USA. https://www.terma.com/press/news-2018/f-35/