Planning for a rainy day in space: How America can build a resilient space future

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  22 décembre 2024 | International, Aérospatial

  Czech arms group CSG plans to boost Kinetic's military ammo sales

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  23 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Trilateral Tempest Expands Industrial Base

  Tony Osborne Ninety percent of Britain's front-line combat aircraft are crewed, but British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace says he expects a “major reversal” of these proportions by 2040. Wallace's speech at the opening of a virtual Farnborough Airshow on July 20—a message reminiscent of the late Duncan Sandys' 1957 defense white paper that declared the manned fighter redundant and guided and ballistic missiles to be the future of Britain's defense—may hint at a radically altered Royal Air Force (RAF) with heavy fielding of swarming UAVs and other additive capabilities such as “loyal wingmen” dominating fleets. But Wallace's comments also touched on the trajectory for the UK-led Tempest Future Combat Air System (FCAS), which is targeted to begin to replace the UK's fleet of Eurofighter Typhoons from 2035. Air Chief Marshal Mike Wigston, chief of the Air Staff, said at the RAF's annual air power conference on July 15 that he intended any FCAS to be optionally manned. Sandys' defense plan sent reverberations through the UK aerospace industry, but the vision for the Tempest calls for a similar fundamental revolution. Saab spending £50 million on UK FCAS hub Technologies are being matured to support year-end business case submission BAE Systems says its factory of the future will subsume the need for heavy, fixed and long-lead tooling—halving production time compared with previous programs. And industry is looking to new players for cybersecurity technology from the banking world and materials technology from the automotive sector, companies from outside the typical defense industrial base. Two years since the announcement of Team Tempest—the industry consortium of BAE Systems, Leonardo, MBDA, Rolls-Royce and the British government's Combat Air Strategy that coalesced at the 2018 Farnborough Airshow—the group is growing for the first time, with the inclusion of Bombardier UK, Collins Aerospace, GE UK, GKN, Martin-Baker, Qinetiq and Thales UK. The additions to the team come in the form of a first wave of industrial agreements, with BAE hinting that more industrial partners will follow. Of the new partners, Collins announced it had been contracted by BAE to provide advanced actuation capabilities. Sweden's Saab announced also on July 20 that it is investing £50 million ($58 million) into the creation of an FCAS center in the UK. The facility will serve as a hub for the company's participation in the FCAS and represent Stockholm's first tentative steps into the venture. Saab does not name the Tempest specifically, with CEO Micael Johansson hinting that Sweden's involvement is focused more on the technology rather than the future platform. “Saab's FCAS strategy ensures that the technology is in place to support a long-term future air capability and also to support continuous upgrades of Gripen E for decades to come,” Johansson said. While the international partnership model for the Tempest has yet to be finalized, British officials have suggested that the partnerships could be agile and scalable. In other words, allowing nations to “partner in a way that suits them,” Richard Berthon, the UK Defense Ministry's Combat Air acquisition program director, previously told Aviation Week (AW&ST July 13-26, p. 52). Johannsson said nations looking to refresh their fleets with the current generation of fighters, like the Gripen or Typhoon, should not be concerned about the push to deliver the Tempest during the 2030s. “A strong joint partnership around a future combat air system will also guarantee Gripen and Eurofighter access to new technologies,” Johannsson said. Existing customers, he said, should see the FCAS as a “seal of approval as we safeguard continuous fighter development.” Until now, the work between the national partners had been on a bilateral basis. The aim was “to define our common objectives,” BAE Systems CEO Charles Woodburn says. But this work has now extended into trilateral studies that include “assessing how we can start to realize the huge potential for collaboration across our three nations,” Woodburn says. Although the talks are now trilateral in nature, the UK says it is still keen to see more international partners “join our flightpath to discovery,” Wallace adds. Industry is already beginning to think trilaterally, with GKN Aerospace in Sweden confirming it will work with Rolls-Royce in the UK and Avio Aero in Italy on feasibility studies for a future fighter jet engine. GKN states it was contracted in the first quarter of 2020 by Sweden's defense materiel agency, FMV, to conduct a study in collaboration with Rolls-Royce. Few details have emerged on the 60 technology demonstration programs currently being developed and matured by Team Tempest in support of the UK Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI). Michael Christie, BAE's head of Future Combat Air Systems, says work on maturing the technologies ready to support the business case submission to the British government at the end of this year has seen the partners “at least achieve or exceed” the maturity targets set, doing so “at great pace” and providing “fundamental evidence to the business case.” “Every one of these [60] projects will deliver a UK, European or world first,” says Cecil Buchanan, the RAF Rapid Capability Office's chief scientist. https://aviationweek.com/ad-week/trilateral-tempest-expands-industrial-base

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  27 janvier 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Le Royaume-Uni prend quatre Airbus H145 de plus

  Le Royaume-Uni a pris quatre Airbus Helicopters H145 de plus pour sa flotte dédiée à la formation de ses équipages d'hélicoptères dans le cadre du programme UKMFTS. Airbus Helicopters fournira quatre H145 supplémentaires au Royaume-Uni dans le cadre du programme de formation de ses pilotes militaires UKMFTS. Les appareils seront livrés cette année et rejoindront un parc déjà composé de 29 H135 et trois H145. Airbus Helicopters avait été sélectionné par Ascent en 2016 comme fournisseur du UKMFTS. Selon les termes du contrat évalué à 500 M£ sur 17 ans, Airbus Helicopters livre des hélicoptères et une solution de soutien intégrée pendant une période de 18 mois. Ce contrat couvre la construction d'hélicoptères en plus du développement des infrastructures de soutien et de la formation des premiers équipages et du personnel de maintenance. Le contrat prévoit aussi que les H135 et H145 fournis par Airbus Helicopters capables d'assurer chaque année les 28 000 heures de formation requises. Dans le cadre du UKMFTS, le Royaume-Uni avait été le premier pays à prendre livraison de la version améliorée du H135, équipée de la suite avionique Helionix développée par Airbus Helicopters pour augmenter les performances et améliorer la sécurité en vol. https://www.air-cosmos.com/article/le-royaume-uni-prend-quatre-airbus-h145-de-plus-22445