19 avril 2021 | International, Terrestre
Pencils up: Bids are due for Army’s Bradley replacement and it’s only the beginning
Here's who will be competing in the initial design phase of the Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle Competition.
20 septembre 2019 | International, Terrestre
Tank-killing missile tests ‘Europe First’ weapons policy
By: Sebastian Sprenger
COLOGNE, Germany — The defense chiefs of France, Belgium and Cyprus have signed an agreement to pursue a common anti-tank missile meant for wider adoption in Europe — an effort that puts the spotlight once again on accusations of protectionism in defense programs here.
The three defense ministers inked the cooperation deal for the Beyond-Line-of-Sight Land Battlefield missile project on the sidelines of a meeting of European defense chiefs in Helsinki, Finland, in late August. The goal is to develop a new “family” of missiles for integration on an “extensive variety of platforms,” according to the official project description. It would be operated by a “dedicated users' club” under a common European doctrine for such weapons.
Pan-European missile company MBDA has claimed the project as its own since officials announced it under the Permanent Structured Cooperation framework, or PESCO, in fall 2018. The vendor wants to sell its Missile Moyenne Portée, or MMP, to other armies besides the French, eyeing a far-reaching partnership with Belgium on ground vehicles as a potential avenue.
Aside from being handed a potentially lucrative market on the continent, products or concepts picked as PESCO leads can win sizable funding contributions from common coffers like the envisioned €13 billion (U.S. $14 billion) European Defence Fund, or EDF.
MBDA executives have danced around the question of how they came to be the quasi-incumbent for the missile project, arguing that the company is the only eligible manufacturer because the weapon is wholly developed and made in Europe. At the same time, company officials coyly painted the selection of the MMP weapon as a decision still up in the air.
That is because there is a formal solicitation process under the European Defence Industrial Development Programme with a closing date of Sept. 20. The process envisions weapons trials sometime in 2020 or 2021 funded by the European Union, according to an MBDA spokesman.
“The next step is that we hope to achieve this trial campaign and demonstrate the capability to inform future acquisitions from European nations,” the spokesman told Defense News.
The problem is, however, that several other European nations already have a different weapon in their arsenals: a variant of the Spike missile, made by Israel's Rafael and sold in Europe by Germany-based Eurospike.
Over the summer, Estonia moved to buy the weapon under a €40 million deal, becoming what Rafael said is the 19th user within NATO and the EU. Germany, which seeks to drive Europe's new defense posture alongside France, also relies on Spike — both the man-portable and the vehicle-mounted variants.
Eurospike officials at the DSEI defense trade expo in London, England, last week complained about being left out of the nascent European missile program. While the Spike weapon is entirely produced in Germany, it is based on Israeli technology, resulting in what one company executive in London estimated to be an overall ratio of roughly 70 percent European and 30 percent Israeli.
According to still-emerging rules for access to European defense projects, only members of the European Economic Area are eligible for EDF funding and collaboration-inducing mechanisms promised by PESCO. As it stands, Britain — after it leaves the EU — and its wares likely would be in, but the Israel connection means the Spike missile is out.
For now, Eurospike officials said they are closely watching the process. “I can't imagine that they will just take the market by storm,” one executive said of MBDA and its missile offering.
With its industrial infighting, the anti-tank weapons serve as something of a test case for whether common projects set up under EU auspices can truly serve the purpose of increasing collaboration among member states. Industry insiders suggest that the raft of existing PESCO efforts — covering everything from battlefield communications to future naval platforms to ground vehicles — comes with a built-in potential for turf battles.
In the end, it seems a good number of PESCO projects come with a vendor team pushing a specific product under the banner or European unity. And as the dust of Euro enthusiasm settles, insiders say, vendors that weren't part of the initial project considerations are bound to find out that defense cooperation on the continent is also about winners and losers.
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26 novembre 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Stop the budgetary bleeding to get the Air Force we need
By: Douglas Birkey In 2018, then-Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson sounded the alarm regarding the size of her service: “The Air Force is too small for what the nation expects of us.” Her response was direct: The service needed to grow from 312 to 386 operational squadrons. Given the concurrent demands presented by China and Russia at the high end of the threat spectrum, Iran and North Korea in the middle, and the continued danger posed by nonstate actors at the lower threat tier, this imperative for growth was grounded in clear requirements. However, instead of marking a positive turning point for the service, subsequent years saw the Air Force grow smaller, older and more fragile. The burgeoning security environment demands that this downward spiral end now. This is exactly why the Senate's version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act includes specific aircraft inventory floors for the Air Force. With positive intentions having fallen short year after year, it is time for legislation to stop the bleeding. No form of power projection is possible without the capabilities afforded by the Air Force. Ships at sea, forces on land and rear echelon operating locations will not survive long if not defended from aerial attack. Long-range strike affords the unique ability to hit critical targets deep behind enemy lines. Air mobility empowers joint force operations. Intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance was the most in-demand mission area over the past two decades, and remains so today. Added to this, the Air Force also provides two-thirds of the nuclear triad. Despite the value provided by these missions, the Air Force has struggled to earn its fair share of the defense budget. It absorbed the largest fiscal cuts out of all the services in the years after the Cold War. Between 1989 and 2001, the Air Force saw procurement funding drop by over 52 percent — nearly 20 percent more than the other services. FY13 saw aircraft procurement funding hit the lowest levels in Air Force history. To add insult to injury, the Air Force also sees nearly 20 percent of its top-line budget diverted to the intelligence community — enough money to buy over 400 F-35 fighter jets a year. No other service gets hit like this. With budget pressures a perennial problem, the Air Force has continually sought to divest aircraft to free up cash. The problem is that the demand for Air Force missions never went away. Quite the opposite, it increased. In 1990, the Air Force had 2,893 fighters; today it has around 1,800. This same period saw bombers drop from 327 to 157. Combat operations have been unending since 1991, which means a smaller number of aircraft and crews simply get spun harder to meet demand. This is an unsustainable pattern, with the B-1B bomber standing as a cautionary tale. It has been flying combat missions on a nonstop basis since the 9/11 attacks. The Air Force retired a third of the B-1B inventory in the 2000s to save money that could be reinvested in the remaining aircraft. Budget pressures in subsequent years saw these savings evaporate, maintenance dollars run too thin and the aircraft pressed to the limit. They hit the breaking point last year, with less than 10 percent of the Air Force's B-1Bs mission-capable. With nearly every mission area in the Air Force inventory labeled as “high demand, low density,” expect to see similar challenges proliferate. These stresses are also a major driver behind the pilot crisis. Shrinking the Air Force in the hopes that expected savings could fund modernization has served as a continual mirage for Air Force planners. Indeed, the Air Force's answer to funding the Advanced Battle Management System and other priorities in the FY21 budget submission was to retire more aircraft. Better networks are of little use without the ability to complete the kill chain, and that takes aircraft. Presumed areas of growth hang precariously years into the future. There's little chance that cash will remain protected given COVID-19 budget pressures. The problem is that even when divestiture plans appear plausible on internal spreadsheets, service officials are not the ultimate arbiters of their resources. The broader Department of Defense, Office of Management and Budget, and Congress each have a vote on how funds are managed. This pattern clearly has not worked for the Air Force for the past 30 years. Playing this losing hand again will break the force at fundamental levels. That is why the Senate's proposed aircraft floor is not just a good idea — it is a necessity. A prudent negotiator does not enter a meeting with a high-risk position as the starting point, but that is exactly what the Air Force has done for far too long. The time has come to openly articulate what is required to meet national security requirements. That is what the 386 operational squadron goal is all about. It comes down to acknowledging what airmen will need to fly into harm's way, get the job done and come home safe. This takes both capability and capacity. It is time to rebuild the Air Force we need. Douglas Birkey is the executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, where he researches issues relating to the future of aerospace and national security. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/11/25/stop-the-budgetary-bleeding-to-get-the-air-force-we-need/
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6 octobre 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Report: US Army could field two new vertical lift aircraft if service lives within its means
The Army's pursuit to procure two future vertical lift aircraft by 2030 needs to have affordability at the forefront as it executes its programs, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment says in a new report.