Textron Systems, Shield AI team up on unmanned project

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  17 septembre 2023 | International, Aérospatial, Sécurité

  SAIC hires former Air Force CIO Knausenberger for tech innovation role

  SAIC brought in $3.7 billion in defense-related revenue in 2022, according to Defense News "Top 100" analysis.

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  9 juillet 2018 | International, Aérospatial

  Germany’s choice for a Tornado replacement could undermine NATO

  By: Dan Goure It is clear to any reasonable observer that the state of the NATO alliance is not good. Even as a candidate, Donald Trump made it clear that he desired to see the other alliance members contribute more to the common defense. As President, Mr. Trump shifted from a request to a demand that NATO countries meet their self-imposed target of spending 2 percent of their individual gross domestic product on defense. He recently returned to this theme, possibly previewing his message to the NATO summit scheduled for later in July. “Germany,” he complained, “has to spend more money. Spain, France. It's not fair what they've done to the United States.” In February, the German parliament's military commissioner published a devastating report on the German military's lack of readiness. At the end of 2017, no submarines and none of the Luftwaffe's 14 large transport planes were available for deployment due to repairs. Much of the rest of the German military's equipment, including fighter jets, tanks and ships, are outdated and in some cases not fully operational because of a lack of spare parts. As a result, fighter pilot training has had to be curtailed because of the number of aircraft unavailable due to maintenance issues. The new head of the Luftwaffe, Lt. Gen. Ingo Gerhartz, confirmed the military commissioner's findings. He publicly admitted that his service is “at a low point. Aircraft are grounded due to a lack of spare parts, or they aren't even on site since they're off for maintenance by the industry.” This lack of investment in critical military capabilities has effected NATO's nuclear deterrent. Germany's fleet of nuclear-capable Tornado aircraft are so old and obsolete that they will have to be retired beginning in 2025. Without a timely replacement, Germany will be out of the nuclear deterrence mission. Any new aircraft being proposed to fill the role played by the Luftwaffe's Tornados must meet an extremely stringent set of safety and operational standards. Because this would be a German aircraft deploying a U.S. nuclear weapon, there are two sets of standards at play. Experts familiar with certifying a new aircraft as nuclear-capable say the process generally takes an average of six to eight years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars. The obvious answer is for the Luftwaffe to acquire some number of F-35A Joint Strike Fighters to replace the Tornado for the nuclear mission. The U.S. Air Force and the F-35 team, led by Lockheed Martin, are currently in the early stages of the nuclear certification process. Italy and the Netherlands are acquiring the F-35 and will certainly use some as dedicated nuclear-delivery platforms. Airbus and the Eurofighter consortium have proposed selling Germany additional Typhoon aircraft to replace the Tornados. The German government has asked Washington if it would accept a nuclear-capable and -certified Typhoon Eurofighter as a Tornado replacement. The Luftwaffe currently operates some 130 Typhoons for air defense. There are two problems with this solution. First, given what it would take to design, develop and test a nuclear-capable Typhoon, much less the six to eight years required for certification, it is too late to go with this option and meet the 2025 date for Tornado retirement. Second, even it could be certified to carry the B-61, the Typhoon will not be able to perform the mission in the high-density, advanced air-defense environment that is already blanketing much of Europe. Delivery of a gravity bomb requires the ability to fly over a heavily defended target, and to do so on the first day of a war. Virtually all senior air force leaders in NATO agree that fourth-generation fighters, including the Typhoon, are not survivable without an extensive and protracted campaign to roll back the air defense threat. Only a fifth generation platform such as the F-35 can beat today's air defenses, much less those that will emerge over the next several decades. The German inquiry regarding the acceptability to Washington of a nuclear-certified Typhoon is really motivated by industrial politics. Germany and France hope to begin development of a fifth-generation fighter ― a project that will take at least 15 years. But if Berlin acquires even a limited number of F-35s, this could undercut that objective. In fact, the head of Airbus recently gave an interview in which he declared that “as soon as Germany becomes an F-35 member nation, cooperation on all combat aircraft issues with France will die.” The German government could not have picked a worse time to play industrial politics with its solemn obligation to participate in the alliance's nuclear deterrence mission. President Trump already believes that most of the NATO allies, including Germany, are not paying their fair share for the common defense. An attempt by Germany to shoehorn a Eurofighter variant into the nuclear weapons delivery mission is another signal that Berlin is just not serious about meeting its alliance obligations. Daniel Gouré is a senior vice president with the Lexington Institute. He worked in the Pentagon during the administration of President George H.W. Bush, and he has taught at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown universities as well as the National War College. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nato-priorities/2018/07/06/germanys-choice-for-a-tornado-replacement-could-undermine-nato/

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  22 juillet 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  COVID Drives AUSA Mega-Conference Online: Gen. Ham

  Bringing together an estimated 33,000 soldiers and civilians from around the world was just too dangerous in the coronavirus era. By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.on July 21, 2020 at 3:42 PM WASHINGTON: Every October, the Walter E. Washington convention center in downtown DC – a behemoth building covering two whole city blocks – fills with soldiers, contractors, and reporters. Over 30,000 people pack shoulder-to-shoulder in conference rooms to hear from Army leaders, speak face to face, line up for fried chicken, shake hands, hug, and handle military hardware from prototype rifles to full-sized tanks. But with COVID-19 cases rising alarmingly around the country, none of that will happen this October. “We've made the difficult decision to convert the 2020 AUSA Annual Meeting from an in-person meeting to a virtual experience,” said retired Gen. Carter Ham, the Association of the US Army's president and CEO, in a statement Tuesday afternoon. The mega-conference – historically one of the biggest in-person gatherings for the defense industry in the DC area – will now take place entirely online over Oct. 13-16. Breaking Defense plans to cover the virtual event as exhaustively (and as exhaustingly for our reporters) as it has the physical one every year since 2011. “With recent trends, it just became clear to me that we simply could not, in any reasonable manner, ensure a safe, secure environment for the 32,000-plus people we expected this October,” Gen. Ham told me in an follow-up email. “We are working very closely with the Army to craft an agenda which provides opportunities for key leaders to connect with our members and constituents.” “One of the keys to that is finding ways to connect Army leaders with the businesses, large and small, who normally are present in the exhibition hall,” Ham said. “Finding a way to do something similar to that experience in the virtual world will be a challenge, but it is an integral part of the AUSA Annual Meeting, so we'll figure it out.” AUSA is still working out the logistics of this massive switch. Registrations and sponsorship agreements from the in-person version of the event will not automatically carry over. “Registration for the new virtual meeting is expected to open by September,” the AUSA statement says. “AUSA is now coordinating details for the virtual event, and team members will be reaching out directly to exhibitors and sponsors about new opportunities.” With over 600 sponsors in a typical year – ranging from small businesses with a single, small booth to titans like Boeing and Lockheed Martin – the Annual Meeting is a major source of revenue for AUSA. How this will impact the association's budget is unclear – even to AUSA itself at this point. Breaking Defense graphic from AUSA data “The AUSA Annual Meeting is our most important revenue-generating event of the year,” Ham said bluntly. “The revenue from this event is largely what allows us to conduct other events throughout the year. So, I don't know yet precisely what the impact will be, but there will be some effect. Fortunately, AUSA is in a strong financial position so we will be able to sustain this change.” AUSA's latest annual report said the 2018 conference “generated $16 million in revenue,” just under half the association's total projected revenue of $33 million for the 2018-2019 fiscal year. (The report for 2019-2020 hasn't been published yet). But AUSA also reported its investment portfolio was worth $51 million; that was as of May 2019, before COVID roiled the stock market, but the portfolio should still be large enough to offer at least some buffer. The initial wave of the COVID-19 coronavirus forced AUSA to cancel its Global Force conference in Huntsville, Ala. this March just a week ahead of opening day. That gave the association no time to schedule virtual alternatives, although multiple events from Army aircraft announcements to Shark Tank-style pitch meetings were hastily turned into teleconferences or webcasts. Global Force had expected some 6,000 attendees. Since then, AUSA has held a host of online events, largely but by no means entirely without glitches, but they were all much smaller in scale. The Annual Meeting had expected some 33,000 attendees. Moving that conference online will be a vastly larger organizational and technical challenge. It's also an opportunity, Ham argued. “While we will all certainly miss the opportunity to be together with the broader Army Family, choosing to provide our programs in a virtual environment does offer us an opportunity to connect with audiences who might not know AUSA all that well or who have simply not been able to travel to Washington DC for the event in prior years,” he told me. “I view this very much as a chance to extend our reach and to more effectively fulfill our mission to support the Army.” Even if nothing glitches, though, the virtual Annual Meeting won't replace the human connection that came from the Army's annual gathering of its disparate tribes. “What will I miss? This is the Army's family reunion,” Ham said. “Every October, the opportunity to see old friends and to make new friends is the most enjoyable part of the Annual Meeting. I'll miss that, to be sure, but I also know that via this virtual experience, we will make new connections, new relationships that will make AUSA 2021 even better when we can all be together again.” https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/covid-drives-ausa-mega-conference-online/