Safran and MTU agree on way ahead for next-gen fighter aircraft engine

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  20 mars 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  UK should rethink deadline for defense, foreign policy review, says former national security adviser

  By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — Former British national security adviser Peter Ricketts has urged the government to put the brakes on its plan to complete an integrated review of defense, security, foreign policy and development by July. The new coronavirus pandemic is partly to blame, he said. “I do not see how a deep, thorough and integrated review covering the entire spectrum [of requirements] can now be done by July,“ Ricketts told a March 17 parliamentary Defence Select Committee hearing on the government's plan. Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson initiated the review following his general election win in early December. Johnson promised it would be the most fundamental review of its kind since the end of the Cold War. Analysts and others have been concerned that the review will be fudged in the rush to complete the promised deep dive into defense, foreign policy and security strategy reform. The defense committee already called for a delay, and it has questions about how the review is being run. Tobias Elwood, the recently appointed committee chairman, said the panel is “not impressed” by the initial way the review is progressing. Elwood said at the March 17 hearing that the Army had been told to submit their requirements by Mar 20, before they had been informed by the government what its new foreign policy will look like. The committee met with Army chiefs last week. The Foreign Office has produced five separate essays on its view of Britain's role in the world, and the Army had not seen the documents, said Elwood. One government lobbyist said that Elwood's remarks showed that Dominic Cummins, Boris Johnson's special adviser and one of the main proponents for radical change in the defense sector, had settled on an answer even before the review questions had been asked. “He's not listening and doesn't appear to care much how he gets the outcome he wants, particularly around areas like technology and procurement,” he said. Ricketts told the committee the already tight timescale had been further jeopardized by the government's concentration on the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic. “I do not see how you could possibly complete the review over the [coming] months, not least because of the bandwidth available for senior ministers and the government more generally [as a result of the virus],” he said. COVID-19′s influence on defense matters was further illustrated March 19 when the Ministry of Defence announced that thousands of regular and reserve troops are being put on standby to assist public services as part of a new support force. Ricketts, who led the Conservative government's 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, said that given the situation, it is possible Johnson might want to put off the review as well as the comprehensive spending review that's running in parallel. The spending review sets the level of departmental spending across government for several years ahead. Alex Ashbourne-Walmsley of Ashbourne Strategic Consulting also believes the defense and funding reviews should be postponed. “It makes no sense to me that the U.K. should continue with either the defense review process or the comprehensive spending review when it is still too soon to determine the long-term economic and social impacts of coronavirus. It would be more sensible to defer everything for at least a year,” she said. Ricketts has suggested the government could come up with baseline foreign policy principles and some initial military priorities while leaving the more detailed work until later. Both he and Jock Stirupp, the former chief of the Defence Staff, told the committee that it is important the defense review and the comprehensive spending review are done in tandem to ensure the money and military requirements went hand-in-hand. The MoD is facing a serious funding shortfall, which is likely to lead to further cancellations or delays to major programs. A recent report by the National Audit Office, the government financial watchdog, said the MoD's 10-year defense equipment plan shows there is a potential funding shortfall of up to £13 billion (U.S. $15 billion). The funding gap is shrinking, but this is the third year in a row the National Audit Office has deemed the plan unaffordable. Defence Procurement Minister Jeremy Quin told Parliament during a session on defense questions March 16 that the government had every intention of continuing with the review. “It's important we get on with it," he said. "We need to take firm decisions, and the swifter, the better.” Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was quizzed about the integrated review timetable in the March 16 session. He said the government is regularly reviewing the decision on timing. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/03/19/uk-should-rethink-deadline-for-defense-foreign-policy-review-says-former-national-security-adviser/

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  23 août 2023 | International, Aérospatial

  Indonesia to buy Boeing’s F-15 jets, Lockheed’s Black Hawk helicopters

  Indonesia has an ongoing need for new combat aircraft as it seeks to better defend the airspace of its estimated 18,000 islands.

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  6 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  US Air Force delays timeline for testing a laser on a fighter jet

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Force's long-planned test of an airborne laser weapon aboard a fighter jet has been delayed until 2023 due to technical challenges and complications spurred by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, its program head said. The Air Force's Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator program, or SHiELD, had originally planned to conduct its first flight demonstration in 2021, but the test has been pushed two years back, said Jeff Heggemeier, SHiELD program manager for the Air Force Research Laboratory. “This is a really complex technology to try to integrate into that flight environment, and that's ultimately what we're trying to do with this program, is demonstrate that laser technology is mature enough to be able to integrate onto that airborne platform,” he told Defense News in a June 10 interview. “But even things like COVID, and COVID shutting down the economy. That has impacts.” Beyond that, the future of using laser weapons aboard fighter aircraft is even more unclear. The goal of SHiELD was to give combat jets a way to counter missiles shot by an enemy aircraft or by air defense systems on the ground. But in May, Mike Griffin, the Pentagon's undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, noted that he was “extremely skeptical” that an airborne laser could be used for missile defense. Asked what that meant for SHiELD, Air Force acquisition czar Will Roper acknowledged that the service is rethinking how it could best use directed-energy technologies. Perhaps the most optimal use for SHiELD wasn't onboard a fighter, he said. “What I've told that team is, let's have a dialogue,” Roper said during a June 9 event hosted by the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. “Let's understand the different power levels and what they should correspond to, and let's not make the highest power level that we can dream up and the mission that's the sexiest be the thing that drives us.” “What I expect to get laser weapons to the goal line has been the humble, but important and very worrisome small drone threat. They continue to show up, they're difficult to attribute — we don't know who is sending them to our installations and tests and things of that nature, and we can't afford to shoot missiles at them,” he added. “So this is a perfect threat to make laser weapons real, and once they're real, we'll do what the military does. We'll look to scale the power.” Heggemeier said there are many ways the Air Force could spin off laser technologies developed by the SHiELD program, but it's critical the service continue with development so it can gauge the maturity and usefulness of the capabilities. “I think it's important for us to first remember what the whole point of SHiELD is. The whole point of SHiELD is not an acquisition program where we're turning out hundreds or tens of these laser systems for operational use. What we're trying to do with SHiELD is exactly answer those questions of: ‘Is laser technology mature enough to go on an airborne platform? Have we solved enough of those technical challenges that this is now a feasible thing?' Because there is that concern.” He also drew a distinction between the tactical, self-defense capability a SHiELD laser would give combat aircraft versus a more powerful laser capable of intercepting highly-advanced ballistic missiles, as the Missile Defense Agency has proposed. “You're not talking about these really, really long ranges. You're talking about a shorter range and different targets just to protect yourself or your wingman,” Heggemeier said. “Missile defense can mean a lot of things. Some of those missile defense missions are very, very hard, and some of them aren't quite so hard.” For now, at least, the Air Force's investment in directed energy remains stable. The service's budget lays out cash for high-energy lasers in multiple funding lines. For fiscal 2021, it requested $15.1 million for basic research and $45.1 million for applied research for high-energy laser technology, as well as another $13 million for high-power, solid-state laser technology. In FY20, the service received $14.8 million for basic research and $48.2 million for applied research for laser technologies. SHiELD is comprised of three elements: the laser itself, which is being developed by Lockheed Martin; the beam control system made by Northrop Grumman; and the pod that encases the weapons system, from Boeing. Heggemeier said the pod is under construction, with integration of the laser and beam control system planned to start next year. “A lot of the challenge is trying to get all of this stuff into this small pod. If you look at other lasers that are fairly mature, we have other laser systems that some other contractors have built that are ready to be deployed. But these are ground-based systems, and they are much, much more mature,” he said. In April 2019, the Air Force Research Lab conducted a ground test with a surrogate laser system — the Demonstrator Laser Weapon System, or DLWS, now in use by the Army. The demonstration involved the successful downing of several air-to-air missiles. “It turns out the DLWS system, when you take everything into account, is a really good surrogate for the laser power on SHiELD,” Heggemeier said. Because both SHiELD and DLWS generate similar amounts of energy on target — in SHiELD's case, Heggemeier would only say that it amounts to “tens of kilowatts” — the surrogate test gave the lab a good idea how the laser physically affects a target. In 2019, the team conducted a flight test of a pod with the same outer mold line as the one under development by Boeing. The pod was mounted to an aircraft — Heggemeier declined to specify the model — and flown around Eglin Air Force Base, Florida, to help measure how vibrations, the force of gravity and other environmental factors might influence the performance of the weapon. Air Force Magazine reported in 2019 that aerial demonstrations of SHiELD would occur onboard an F-15 fighter jet. https://www.defensenews.com/air/2020/06/30/us-air-force-delays-timeline-for-testing-a-laser-on-a-fighter-jet/