State Department approves $85M missile sale to Chile

Sur le même sujet

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  28 juin 2018 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR

  Australia commits to Triton in $5 billion deal

  By: Nigel Pittaway MELBOURNE, Australia — Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on June 26 that the Australian government will purchase six Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton unmanned surveillance aircraft. The initial investment in the Triton capability is AU$1.4 billion (U.S. $1.03 billion), which includes AU$200 million to enter into a cooperative development program with the U.S. Navy; and AU$364 million for major infrastructure works at two Royal Australian Air Force bases. The total cost of the deal, including whole of life sustainment costs, is estimated to be AU$6.9 billion Australian dollars (U.S. $5.1 billion). The first aircraft will be delivered in 2023 and the last in 2025. They will be based at RAAF Base Edinburgh in South Australia and at Tindal in the Northern Territory, but are also likely to be forward-deployed to other airfields around the continent, including a string of bare bases to the north and north-west. The announcement marks the Gate 2 milestone in the Australian Defence's Force's Air 7000 Phase 1B program, which seeks to acquire a high altitude, long endurance maritime surveillance platform to complement its eventual fleet of 12 Boeing P-8A Poseidon manned maritime patrol aircraft. Australia's Triton program earlier achieved Gate 1 approval in 2014, and the 2016 Defence White Paper affirmed the government's commitment to the acquisition of the capability, subject to the successful completion of the U.S. Navy's Triton development program. At that time the requirement was for seven Tritons , one less than the six announced yesterday, and was initially capped at AU$4 billion, although this did not include through-life sustainment costs. “The Triton will complement the surveillance role of the P-8A Poseidon aircraft through sustained operations at long ranges as well as being able to undertake a range of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) tasks,” according to a joint statement by Prime Minister Turnbull, Minister for Defence Marise Payne and Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne. “Together these aircraft will significantly enhance our anti-submarine warfare and maritime strike capability, as well as our search and rescue capability.” Minister Pyne said that the Triton will be responsible for surveillance of Australia's areas of maritime responsibility, which represents over 10 percent of the world's surface. “They will provide surveillance and reconnaissance across the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Ocean and the Southern Ocean as far as Antarctica,” he said. “Triton provides unprecedented endurance and 360-degree coverage through its unique sensor suite,” commented Doug Shaffer, Northrop Grumman's vice president of Triton programs. “Australia has one of the largest sea zones in the world over which it has rights to use marine resources, also known as an Economic Exclusion Zone. As a flexible platform, Triton can serve in missions as varied as maritime domain awareness, target acquisition, fisheries protection, oil field monitoring and humanitarian relief.” The Australian Defence Force estimates Triton is capable of establishing a ten-hour orbit in the Southern Ocean, south of Heard Island, or similar efforts to the north of Guam and to the East of Fiji in the Pacific Ocean, from bases around the country. Australia is interested in the multi-intelligence (MULTI-INT), also known as integration functional capability 4 version of the Triton. This features several enhancements over the baseline aircraft and includes a signals intelligence payload which, in U.S. Navy service, is intended to replace the Lockheed EP-3E Aries surveillance platform. The cooperative development program Australia has signed with the U.S. Navy is similar to the agreement it has with the Navy regarding P-8A spiral development and will seek to influence the further development of the MULTI-INT Triton to meet Australia's specific needs. Items of interest are understood to include the integration of a weather radar system, for prolonged operations in tropical conditions where daily thunderstorms are a fact of life, and a ground moving target indicator to facilitate overland ISR missions in addition to the blue water maritime surveillance role. “This cooperative program will strengthen our ability to develop advanced capability and conduct joint military operations,” Prime Minister Turnbull said. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2018/06/27/australia-commits-to-triton-in-5-billion-deal/

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  10 décembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  New Images Of The Tempest Sixth-Generation Aircraft Revealed During UK Industry Engagement Event

  Development for the new Tempest sixth-generation fighter is moving on with some revolutionary concepts. Team Tempest and the Royal Air Force recently held a virtual event to provide an update about the development opportunities of the new sixth generation aircraft to industry and government representatives from Northern Ireland, the first of a series of events to engage with industries across the UK. Within the press release there is also some new renderings of the aircraft which, we have to note, is not in its final shape as it's being designed “from the inside out” and the airframe's exterior design may change to reflect changes in the internal systems. According to the press release, “Delegates heard from Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Wigston and other RAF senior leaders who highlighted how Team Tempest is taking a revolutionary approach to partnership, engaging with a wide range of leading companies, SMEs and academia to bring leading innovators into the endeavour and ensure the UK remains at the leading edge of Combat Air systems development. The RAF Capability leadership team highlighted updates in emerging strategy and identified examples of innovation and future opportunities. Key members from the Team Tempest industry partner community also provided attendees with updates on the programme and explained how Tempest is working in radical ways to develop world-leading capability, with a focus on affordability and efficiency.” Team Tempest is currently made of the core industry partners BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, Leonardo UK and MBDA UK, which were joined last year by Leonardo Italy, Elettronica, Avio Aero, MBDA Italy, Saab and GKN Aerospace Sweden and, more recently, by Thales UK, Bombardier Belfast, Collins Aerospace, GE Aviation UK, GKN Aerospace, Martin Baker and QinetiQ. A widespread industry participation is considered essential for the programme to bring the best expertise to work on the more than 60 technology demonstrations which are currently in progress. According to a statement shared by the UK Ministry of Defence and the core industry partners, “Tempest is one of the UK's most ambitious technological endeavours and designed to deliver a highly advanced, adaptable combat air system to come into service from the mid-2030s. This next generation combat aircraft, which forms part of a wider combat air system, will exploit new technologies as they evolve to respond to the changing nature of the battlespace, addressing increasingly high-tech and complex threats and conflict.” Back in October, engineers working on the project revealed some of the highly innovative systems that are being developed for Tempest as part of the Future Combat Air System Technology Initiative (FCAS TI) programme. Here is what has been disclosed to the public so far. Leonardo, which is the project lead for electronics, is developing a new radar technology called Multi-Function Radar Frequency System. The new sensor will reportedly collect and process 10'000 times more data than existing systems, or “equivalent to the internet traffic of a large city every second”, providing the operators with a clear view of the battlespace and of potential targets. According to the company, complete sub-systems have already been built and successfully tested, paving the way eventually to future airborne testing. BAE Systems if working on another revolutionary concept, the “wearable cockpit”. In this case, the cockpit as we know it, full of switches, gauges and screens, becomes completely digital and all physical controls are replaced by Augmented and Virtual Reality systems. The new cockpit would be projected inside the pilot's helmet and completely customizable according to the pilot's preference and mission's needs. As human-AI teaming, a virtual copilot is being developed to interact with the pilot and provide support during the flight. “Psycho-physiological” technologies are also being trialed to study the operator's physical and cognitive processes to better understand increasing exertion, stress, workload and fatigue. According to the company, some of these technologies are being tested controlled test flight conditions aboard the Typhoon to inform further development. MBDA UK is also working on the wearable cockpit concept to integrate weapons systems information and operations. Rolls-Royce is working on the advanced combustion system technology that will power Tempest. The next-generation system is being designed to be hotter than previous ones to increase the efficiency of the engine, its range and speed, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Together with the higher-temperature combustion, there will be a new thermal management system that will use the turbine as a heat sink to recycle thermal energy, removing the need for overboard venting and improving the efficiency, and an increased electrical power production, reportedly in the order of one megawatt, that will be used to power all the aircraft's subsystems. This follows the assessment by Rolls Royce that future fighter aircraft will have unprecedented levels of electrical power demand and thermal load that need to be managed accordingly to maintain the airframe's low observability. Being more specific, the company stated that they will integrate an Electrical Embedded Starter Generator that will function both as an APU and as an electrical generator after the engine is spooled up. The Tempest is expected to have also his own loyal wingman, currently being developed as the Lightweight Affordable Novel Combat Aircraft (LANCA) concept. According to the MoD, LANCA will offer “increased protection, survivability and information for the manned aircraft – and could even provide an unmanned combat air ‘fleet' in the future.” A demonstration project, called “Moquito” and comparable to the Skyborg program of the U.S. Air Force, is currently in its first phase of evaluation. Three teams, Boeing Defence UK, Team Avenger (led by Blue Bear Systems Research), and Team Blackdawn (Callen-Lenz, Bombardier Belfast and Northrop Grumman UK), submitted designs for the flight demonstrations phase, which could begin in 2022-2023, after two finalists are selected during second phase of evaluation. LANCA will reportedly be a transonic aircraft costing one-tenth of a fighter aircraft, able to employ multi-role sensors, Electronic Warfare suites and both air-to-air and air-to-surface weapons. The unmanned aircraft project, led by the RAF Rapid Capabilities Office and the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, originated in 2015, three years before the Tempest announcement. While a timeline for its entry into service has not been disclosed, the LANCA may be first deployed alongside the Typhoon and the F-35, before the entry into service of the new Tempest in 2035. https://theaviationist.com/2020/12/09/new-images-of-the-tempest-sixth-generation-aircraft-revealed-during-uk-industry-engagement-event/

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  17 décembre 2024 | International, Aérospatial

  No runways, no sorties: Chinese missiles threaten US airpower plans

  Opinion: American warplanes could be kept from joining the fray of a conflict with China for days or weeks, analysts have concluded.