21 octobre 2020 | International, Terrestre, Sécurité
COLOGNE, Germany — Rheinmetall is teaming with Textron Systems to pitch the Lynx KF41 vehicle as a Bradley replacement to the U.S. Army, the company announced Tuesday.
The campaign marks the second time that the Düsseldorf, Germany-based company is targeting the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle program following an unsuccessful attempt last year that eventually saw the ground service halt the race.
This time around, Rheinmetall is putting greater emphasis on a U.S. footprint, led by its growing American Rheinmetall Vehicles subsidiary based in Sterling Heights, Michigan. Textron, as the newcomer on Team Lynx, is meant to be front and center when it comes to manufacturing and robotics capabilities.
“Textron Systems' Slidell, Louisiana, vehicle production facility has supported more than 15 armored vehicle programs of record supporting over 20 countries,” Henry Finneral, senior vice president and general manager of Textron Systems' Marine and Land Systems business, said in a statement. “We stand ready to support the team and the US Army and deliver a trusted platform for the future.”
Matt Warnick, managing director at American Rheinmetall Vehicles, said the “teaming agreement brings together two of the world's leading providers of defense industry solutions."
Raytheon remains part of the team.
Executives hope the new Army competition will give all bidders more leeway in fine-tuning their eventual offers to the service's requirements. That marks a contrast to the previous acquisition attempt, where the ground service essentially wanted specific features already built into prototype vehicles, with little time for companies to adjust.
This time around, the Army plans to downsize to five bidders, then three, before picking an eventual winner. A final request for proposals is expected late this year or early next.
Service officials have put competitors on notice that an open architecture in the vehicle design will be at a premium, a feature that Rheinmetall touted in its bid notice.
“The network is almost more important in some ways than building the combat vehicles,” Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, program executive officer of ground combat systems, told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army's virtual conference, which ended last week.
Rheinmetall previously planned to present the teaming arrangement with Textron at this year's AUSA show if the event had taken place in person.
5 septembre 2024 | International, Naval
The drill involved joint operations in the maritime transit route known as the GIUK gap, an acronym for Greenland, Iceland and the United Kingdom.
4 décembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
12/4/2020 By Jon Harper Business is still booming on the foreign military sales front even though the world is reeling from the economic effects of the COVID-19 crisis. Boosting exports of U.S.-made defense equipment has been a top policy goal of the Trump administration. The government finished fiscal year 2020 with a total of $84 billion in potential FMS sales that had been approved. Roman Schweizer, an analyst with the Cowen Washington Research Group, called it a “massive” case load. “This isn't technically the ‘real' number but it's still impressive,” he said in a newsletter, noting that not all of the deals had been consummated. In 2019, $68 billion in potential FMS cases were announced, with $55 billion in actual sales reported, according to the research group. The 2020 numbers were better than many observers anticipated. “Some of the concerns that have been initially identified in April have not come to fruition,” R. Clarke Cooper, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, told reporters in October. In July, the U.S. government processed the second highest amount of FMS case work in the history of the State Department, he noted. “On large items that would take a long train or trail in contracting and production, have we seen a change there? No,” he said. “If anything, the work toward getting significant procurement for, let's say, F-16s or a Patriot missile battery, those things have not abated.” What explains this dynamic? Some nations have had better than expected economic recoveries, Cooper said. “There has been a recommitment by states who at one point understandably could have put on park or pause their modernization plans,” he said. “Overall, if we're looking at long-term modernization plans across the board ... we're currently remaining on a trajectory of where we were in FY '19 going into '21.” That doesn't mean nothing will change, he noted. There will probably be fluctuations on payments and payment schedules, he said. Some buyers could seek foreign military financing or grant assistance, or sequence their procurements differently. While trends seem positive, government officials don't have a crystal ball when it comes to FMS in 2021 and beyond, he noted. The new fiscal year began strong, with the Defense Security Cooperation Agency announcing in October that it had cleared more than $4 billion worth of missiles to Taiwan, as well as $27.2 billion worth of aircraft to Finland including F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers and F-35 joint strike fighters. https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/12/4/us-arms-sales-remain-robust-despite-pandemic
29 octobre 2021 | International, Terrestre, C4ISR