11 décembre 2024 | International, Aérospatial
Defense bill for 2025 would delay F-35 deliveries
Key lawmakers grew frustrated with the F-35 program earlier this year, as critical upgrades stalled and jets piled up at Lockheed Martin's Texas factory.
16 octobre 2020 | International, Terrestre
Soldiers to evaluate new light tank prototypes
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army is preparing a soldier vehicle assessment of two different light tank prototypes for infantry brigade combat teams that will start in January 2021 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
The assessment will run through June 2021, according to the service.
BAE Systems and General Dynamics Land Systems were chosen in December 2018 to each build 12 prototypes of the Army's future mobile protected firepower, or MPF, vehicle identified in the service's ground combat vehicle strategy published in 2015. The service had found the capability one the service lacks.
GDLS is building a vehicle that takes the United Kingdom's AJAX chassis and combines it with an M1 Abrams tank turret.
BAE Systems' design is an updated M8 Buford armored gun system with new capabilities and components.
“I just had my deep dive today on the SVA [soldier vehicle assessment] with the 82nd [Airborne],” Maj. Gen. Brian Cummings, the Army's program executive officer for ground combat systems, told Defense News in a recent interview.
Work is ongoing to prepare ranges and roads for the arrival of the prototypes, he said.
The MPF is going to be critical for the infantry because it provides infantry brigade combat teams with an organic capability to take care of impediments to forward progression such as gunfire from a machine gun nest or another enemy vehicle.
The Army is expected to choose a winner in 2022. The first units will get MPF in fiscal 2025. The Army plans to initially build 26 vehicles, with an option to build 28 more and retrofit eight prototypes.
GDLS told Defense News in an interview ahead of the Association of the U.S. Army's annual conference that it has delivered three vehicles to the Army. One is at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland, going through characterization and mobility testing and preparing for firing. Another is at Yuma Proving Grounds, Arizona, undergoing desert testing and preparing for soldier training.
Five more prototypes are in “some form of checkout, getting ready for their final inspection report to deliver to the government,” a GDLS spokesperson said, and the company is on track to deliver all of the vehicles this year.
BAE is looking forward to the assessment because the two prototypes are so different from one another, said Jim Miller, the company's senior business development director for combat vehicles.
The BAE's offering is smaller — fitting in between the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle and a Stryker in terms of size — while GDLS' vehicle is bigger, as it's based on the M1 Abrams chassis.
The BAE's MPF prototype can be transported via a C-130 aircraft. Three can fit on a C-17 aircraft. And even though it is small, it has the survivability of BAE's Armored Multipurpose Vehicle, Miller said.
The Army is requiring the vehicle be C-17 transportable.
Soldier assessments for other recent competitions have weighed heavily into decisions, Miller added. “I think the soldier vehicle assessment is going to be really important,” he said. “Did we get this right? Now which one is closer to the mark?”
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8 octobre 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Contracts for October 7, 2021
Today
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7 décembre 2020 | International, Naval
Norfolk Naval Shipyard can go ahead with power and steam plant, state air quality regulators say
By DAVE RESS DAILY PRESS | DEC 04, 2020 AT 5:14 PM Norfolk Naval Shipyard can proceed with plans to build a plant to supply the steam and most of the electricity it uses, the State Air Pollution Control Board ruled. The board found that the new facility would not boost pollutants — including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxide — above air-quality standards. Its staff analyses also found increased emissions of those chemicals would not be significant, although the board staff did note that increases in very small particulate matter would be significant. The shipyard wants to install two natural gas-powered turbines, each capable of generating 7 megawatts of electricity, as well as a boilers, heat-recovery generators and one 2.4 megwatt steam turbine. The $30 million project would allow the yard to generate its own steam, instead of purchasing it from the nearby Wheelabrator plant. The plant also would supply most of the electricity the yard now receives from Dominion Energy. James Boyd, president of the Portsmouth branch of the NAACP, said the project would add pollutants to the already bad air, raising serious environmental justice concerns. In a letter to the board, he also said forecasts of emissions miscalculated totals, by reporting pollutant totals from one gas turbine and one burner from the steam generator, instead of calculating the total of all the turbines were operating. University of Richmond geography professor Mary Finley-Brook noted that the shipyard is a Superfund site, which means its neighbors are more vulnerable to harm from emissions. Finley-Brook said the assessment of impact on community health was inadequate. A study for the board by two Massachusetts-based PhD toxicologists said air currently is safe and new plant would not change that, while board staff said air quality in the area had improved over the past 20 years. Chesapeake Bay Foundation executive director Peggy Sanner said she is disappointed that the board did not require monitoring and reporting of actual emissions from the plant, once it is operating, in 2022. “There are serious environmental justice concerns around building a new fossil fuel plant in this predominantly African-American community, which is overwhelmed by health risks from industrial pollution, she said, adding " Portsmouth residents already live near high concentrations of toxic waste at the nine Superfund sites within a 15-mile radius.” https://www.pilotonline.com/business/shipyards/dp-nw-naval-shipyard-plan-20201204-6pb3dpzdxvgo5b5yr3z4ygptem-story.html