Spanish-British shipyard team wins bid for UK naval logistics fleet

Sur le même sujet

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  13 juin 2019 | International, Autre défense

  Heckler & Koch — maker of the Marine Corps M27 — is in dire straits

  By Ian D'Costa For decades, German arms giant Heckler & Koch has served as the gold standard for military and civilian weapons manufacturing — building revolutionary and oftentimes game-changing rifles, machine guns, grenade launchers, submachine guns and pistols for a variety of customers including special operations forces, conventional infantry units and law enforcement agencies. After a lackluster 2018, reports indicate that H&K is now struggling to keep its head above water, with the hopes that boosting sales in FY2019 buys the company at least another year to come out of the red and fix the situation it's in. The Tactical Wire recently reported that German business journals have already predicted the end for what was once one of the most powerful arms manufacturers in the world. In fact, the situation is so bad that, as The Firearm Blog reported just last month, H&K employees jointly voted to increase weekly work hours without paid overtime, as well as nixed a one-off payment of 400 Euros per head for the month of July, so as to provide their beleaguered company some form of relief. H&K's financial woes stem primarily from diminishing sales, so much so that FY2018 would have seen the company tank had it not been for “two bridging loans from an unnamed major shareholder.” As the company's preexisting contracts with various international buyers are fulfilled, it has faced immeasurable difficulty generating new large-scale contracts with any of its products. According to Neue Zürcher Zeitung, after KPMG conducted an audit of H&K in 2018, it was forced to insert a red flag warning that: “the lack of liquidity endangers the continued existence of Heckler & Koch." KPMG went on to state that the only way H&K would survive going forward is to generate a considerable bump in revenue over previous years, or face bankruptcy. Earlier this year, H&K completed production and delivery of the M27 IAR (a derivative of the HK416) to the US Marine Corps. However, contracts with countries in the process of revamping their small arms arsenals, such as Portugal, have failed to materialize with these countries opting for weapons from other manufacturers. 2019 has also seen the imposition of a multi-million dollar fine on H&K by a German court after it was discovered that the company violated Germany's War Weapons Control Act through the illegal sales of rifles to Mexican states affected considerably by drug-trade violence. H&K's hopes more than likely rest in securing a massive contract yet to be tendered by the German government for the long-term replacement of the German army's G36 assault rifles, another H&K product though one which didn't necessarily live up to the next-generation hype that earlier surrounded it. Whether or not H&K will win the contract is a completely different question altogether, as it's also standard German defense procurement procedure to take into account the fiscal health and economic well being of the companies which have bid for larger contracts... and that's not looking too good for H&K. It should also be noted that H&K is currently in the process of reequipping the French army with HK416 rifles to replace the FAMAS bullpup rifle platform with an overall mass order of over 93,000 units. The Norwegian government also contracted the company to supply HK416s to the Norwegian Armed Forces earlier this year. However, that might not be enough to save H&K. Should H&K lose out on the German G36 replacement contract, this could spell the end for the 71 year-old German small arms producer, and a potentially new beginning for a restructured company in its place. https://www.militarytimes.com/off-duty/gearscout/irons/2019/06/12/heckler-koch-maker-of-the-marine-corps-m27-is-in-dire-straits/

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  6 février 2024 | International, Terrestre

  Nato orders AT4 anti-armour weapons from Saab

  The AT4 is a man-portable weapon used for the protection of vital assets, fixed defence installations and key supply points.

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  23 avril 2019 | International, Terrestre

  US Army needs another year to pick protection system for Stryker

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army plans to take another year to pick an Active Protection System for its Stryker combat vehicle, according to the military deputy to the Army acquisition chief. The service is already fielding the Rafael-made Trophy APS on its Abrams tank and has picked IMI's Iron Fist for the Bradley Fighting Vehicle — both as interim systems until the Army can develop an advanced future system — but it had to go back to square one when its attempt to outfit Stryker with Herndon, Virginia-based Artis LLC's Iron Curtain system failed. The Army put out a request for possible systems to be qualified as an interim solution on the Stryker. Officials ultimately chose a Rafael and DRS team and a Rheinmetall and UBT team to participate in a live-fire rodeo last November to see if either system might work. But while it was believed a decision would come soon after, Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski testified at an April 2 Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee hearing that it would take another year to make a decision. “We have two companies that are in the process of competing for [APS on Stryker]. One is a venture between ... Rafael and DRS and the other is Rheinmetall and UBT, so we are in the process of going through that,” Ostrowski said. “It's going to take about a year, quite frankly, in order to put those systems on the vehicles, characterize them and make a determination as to whether or not to move forward with either one of the two vendors.” Ostrowski added the service had asked each team to provide blueprints and to build their non-developmental APS systems to fit on Stryker. “They are in the process of doing that build,” he said. “And once the build is put on the vehicle, it's then a matter of testing in order to ensure that it works,” Ostrowski said, which is not unlike the process the Army went through to characterize and qualify APS systems on both Abrams and Bradley. Israeli company Rafael and DRS submitted its Trophy VPS — a lighter version of Trophy — for the rodeo. Germany-based Rheinmetall partnered with Unified Business Technologies, based in Michigan, and submitted its Active Defense System — now renamed StrikeShield. During the rodeo, participants did not perform a full installation of their systems on the vehicle. Instead, they set up test rigs in front of Strykers or hung their system off a Stryker in the evaluation. Following the rodeo, the idea was to select one, possibly two systems, to begin some sort of installation characterization on a platform deemed most appropriate for the APS system, Col. Glenn Dean, the Army's Stryker program manager who is also in charge of the interim APS effort, told Defense News in October 2018. Meanwhile, Ostrowski said the Army bought 88 Iron Fist systems for Bradley in 2019 and planned to buy another 36 in the FY20 budget. The service is on a path to field four brigades of Abrams with Trophy by FY21. The Army is also developing its own Modular Active Protection System, which is seen more like a digital integrated backbone that will be designed with an open-system architecture so that vendors can bring radars, optical sensors and hard- or soft-kill effectors and plug them in, according to Ostrowski. The important thing is “to get a capability out there first. . . . Now it's just a matter of moving beyond that,” he said. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2019/04/02/us-army-needs-another-year-to-pick-protection-system-for-stryker/