30 août 2019 | International, Aérospatial
By: Aaron Mehta
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has a new combatant command.
With a twirl of the pen, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed into creation U.S. Space Command, the 11th war-fighting command for the Defense Department.
“This is a landmark day, one that recognizes the centrality of space to America's national security and defense," President Donald Trump said during the event, held in the Rose Garden of the White House.
“It's all about space,” Trump said, adding that for anyone looking to challenge the U.S. in orbit, “it's going to be a whole different ballgame.”
Air Force Gen. Jay Raymond is the new head of SPACECOM; Army Lt. Gen. James Dickinson has been nominated to become the deputy commander. Upon Trump's signature, 287 individuals, pulled largely from U.S. Strategic Command, became the first members of the new command.
Earlier in the day, Raymond and Stephen Kitay, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, told reporters the creation of SPACECOM marked a new era in how the Defense Department approaches space.
“We are at a strategic inflection point. There is nothing that we do [as a joint force] that isn't enabled by space. Zero,” Raymond said. “Our goal is to actually deter a conflict from extending into space. The best way I know how to do that is to be prepared to fight and win” should deterrence fail.
SPACECOM's mission falls into four broad categories:
The command will include a traditional headquarters staff, service components from all four armed services and two operational components: Combined Forces Space Component Command — focused on integrating space capabilities around the globe and throughout joint coalition partners — and Joint Task Force for Space Defense — focused on protecting and defending the war-fighting domain.
“Space will not be an Achilles' heel. We will protect and defend and provide it for our way of life and our way of war,” Kitay added.
Technically, this is a relaunch of SPACECOM, which existed in another form from 1985 through 2002. However, Raymond said, the two organizations are very different, with a “sharper” focus on the dangers from other nations in space a key part of the new incarnation. Those threats include kinetic and non-kinetic activities from competitors such as China and Russia — and any future competitors who might gain space capabilities in the future.
As if to underscore the changing space environment, news broke Thursday that Iran's most recent attempt at a space launch appears to have failed on the ground. The effort was the third failed launch attempt this year, but the effort shows Iran is willing to invest significant national capital into putting assets into orbit.
SPACECOM will continue to grow, including a final selection on the location of its headquarters. But questions remain about integration plans with an eventual Space Force, should Congress back its creation as a new military branch.
The budget for SPACECOM in fiscal 2020 was $83.8 million, of which $75.6 million was shifted from previous organizations.
Raymond warned that a continuing resolution this year would have a “significant impact” on the standing up of the new command. “We need to have stable budgets as we build this command. Continuing resolutions are never good, and it would be bad in this case as well,” he said.
15 juillet 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Alors qu'un premier pilote de chasse du 388th Fighter Wing vient de passer le cap des 1000 heures de vol sur F-35A, les responsables du Pentagone ont retardé l'approbation de la production à taux plein du chasseur de Lockheed Martin. Car depuis 2017, un essai de simulation vient gâcher la fête.
19 mai 2021 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
La pépite militaire Fichou, spécialiste de l'optique de précision, basée à Fresnes, a été acquise mardi 18 mai par le groupe français HEF (Loire), acteur de l'ingénierie des surfaces. Fichou est un industriel crucial de la base industrielle et technologique de défense (BITD) française, souligne la revue Challenges. Il produit des composants optiques de haute précision, essentiels pour les avions de combat Rafale et les satellites militaires, notamment. « Fichou détient une expertise clé pour l'optique de précision, une technologie décisive pour nos avions et nos satellites », indiquait Florence Parly, en visite sur le site de Fresnes en juillet 2018, évoquant une « vitrine du savoir-faire et de l'excellence industrielle de notre pays ». Challenges et Les Echos du 19 mai
13 février 2020 | International, Terrestre
The Army's slashed its 2021 buys of the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV) and upgraded Paladin PIM howitzer to give the factory time to make fixes, particularly to quality control. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR. PENTAGON: Two of the three armored fighting vehicle programs being built by BAE System's factory in York, Pennsylvania have been slashed in the 2021 budget. While the Marine Corps continues to ramp up production of its eight-wheeled Amphibious Combat Vehicle, from 56 ACVs in 2020 to 72 in '21, that increase is swamped by Army cuts to two tracked vehicles, both derived from BAE's iconic but aging M2 Bradley: Production of the turretless utility variant of the Bradley, the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle (AMPV), will plummet from 121 in the 2020 budget to just 32 in '21, recovering to 168 in '22. Production of the upgraded M109A7 PIM version of the Paladin artillery vehicle, which uses the Bradley suspension and drive train, will fall from 96 vehicles (48 howitzers and 48 ammo carriers) to 60, recovering to 88 in '22. Those 2022 figures are a forecast in the five-year budget plan, however, not a formal request to Congress, and they might change. “Once you start to get that production line facilitized — and again it's not going to be one of those things you figure out in a couple months — it's going to be an iterative every-year look at what's the right rate [and] what's the most effective and efficient way to run that line,” deputy assistant secretary John Daniels told reporters yesterday. The Army had already reduced production of both BAE vehicles in its 2020 request last year – along with over 180 other programs – as it ruthlessly scrubbed its current programs for savings it could reinvest in higher-priority, higher-tech weapons for future wars with Russia or China. But BAE's York plant has also had trouble keeping up both quality-control standards – notably for welding armored hulls – and production rates as it tried to expand its tooling and its workforce to meet Army demand, attracting the personal attention of then-Army Secretary Mark Esper. Raytheon's Naval Strike Missile Gallery The Naval Strike Missile is a long-range, precision strike weapon that seeks and destroys enemy ships at distances greater than 100 nautical miles. Learn More. “Part of the problem was “getting the production facility right-sized,” Daniels said, “[and] there were some additional unforeseen issues in the industrial base” – presumably a reference to the quality control issues. So the Army decided to “slow the production curve to get a little bit of time to get a better vehicle,” he said. “It would delay it by about six months.” We've asked BAE Systems for comment and will update this story as soon as they get back to us. https://breakingdefense.com/2020/02/bae-york-plant-problems-trigger-big-army-cuts