4 mars 2024 | International, Aérospatial
11 octobre 2018 | International, Aérospatial
Serbia looks to acquire Chinese drones and the technological know-how
WARSAW, Poland — Serbia's acting assistant defense minister has announced the ministry is negotiating with a number of Chinese drone manufacturers to acquire UAVs for the Serbian military.
Nenad Miloradovic said Serbia aims to buy Chinese drones for its armed forces as well as the technology that will allow the country's defense industry to produce UAVs in the long term.
"This package deal, under which we plan to purchase, but also produce reconnaissance drones for the Serbian military, should be implemented shortly," Miloradovic said, as reported by local daily Blic.
The official said that Serbia is positioning itself as a military-neutral country, and its government aims to procure weapons and military gear for the country's armed forces from various suppliers.
"We don't have ideological prejudices in what concerns buying weapons," Miloradovic said.
In a sign of strengthened military cooperation with Russia, Serbia's government earlier this year approved the purchase of six Mil Mi-17 helicopters, complementing acquisitions of other aircraft and weapons from Moscow. In contrast, Serbia signed a deal in 2016 to buy nine H145M helicopters from Dutch-French company Airbus.
The value of the planned UAV deal was not disclosed by the Serbian official.
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29 septembre 2022 | International, Autre défense
Congress reauthorizes DoD innovation grants with new China safeguards
The reauthorization caps off months of uncertainty as to the program's future amid concerns over Chinese influence and commercialization.
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1 décembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
What Do Pentagon Leaders Aim To Achieve Before Inauguration Day?
Jen DiMascio November 30, 2020 What does the current Pentagon leadership team want to achieve with the time it has remaining before the Biden administration takes office in January? Aviation Week Executive Editor for Defense and Space Jen DiMascio answers: Pentagon Editor Lee Hudson put this question to Ellen Lord, the Pentagon's acquisition chief, during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Ascend conference on Nov. 18. According to Lord, she is focused on protecting the supply chain and helping the acquisition system adapt to acquire software. Lord is working to protect the supply chain in two primary ways: • One is to protect companies critical to national technologies from investment by adversaries. • The other is to protect the supply of rare metals used to make microelectronics. The Pentagon has been working with the U.S. government's Committee on Foreign Investment, which reviews foreign transactions in the U.S. for national-security implications to “block or undo a lot of transactions” in which adversaries are buying critical U.S. technologies or real estate adjacent to military installations, Lord says. Rather, the Pentagon is trying to partner with companies that can help the U.S. increase its technological and economic security. To that end, the Defense Department is building an electronic marketplace that Lord compares to a dating app—to match clean investors with companies building defense technologies. “We've practiced this in some different one-off events,” Lord says, “but we are literally just going through federal paperwork right now to launch this in December.” A related matter is lessening the U.S. dependence on countries like China for rare minerals such as those used in the microelectronics industry. “COVID has shown us that we cannot have dependencies on non-allies and partners and makes sure that we get the supplies we need when we need them,” Lord says. The Pentagon has a real need for radiation-hardened micro-electronics for its space-industrial base and nuclear enterprise. “Although we developed over 50% of the intellectual property around micro-electronics domestically, the bulk of manufacturing and almost all packaging and testing are conducted offshore. That just does not lead us in a place where we have a secure and resilient microelectronics industrial base,” she explains. And finally, Lord aims to continue to roll out tools for the acquisition workforce to incorporate iterative software development into the way it works. “We know that, if you do software correctly, it's a constant iteration of development, production and sustainment,” she adds. “We don't want to be constrained by different budgets and get into too much [of an] administrative hurdle. We've tried to be very innovative on the business side.” https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/budget-policy-operations/what-do-pentagon-leaders-aim-achieve-inauguration-day