The Army’s future tank may not be a tank

Sur le même sujet

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  29 octobre 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense

  Italy defense budget rebounds despite coronavirus crisis

  Tom Kington ROME — Italy has announced a major boost to its defense budget even as the country spends millions of euros battling the devastating effect of COVID-19 on its economy. Overall defense ministry spending is up 9.6 percent this year to €15.3 billion (U.S. $18.1 billion), with the procurement budget emerging as the big winner as it rises by 26 percent from last year if coupled with top-up spending from the industry ministry. “This is a very positive budget for the armed forces, especially for procurement during this challenging economic climate,” said Paolo Crippa, a defense analyst at the CESI think tank in Rome. The figures are included in Italy's 2020 budget, which should have been released in the spring, but was held up by the COVID-19 crisis which hit Italy hard in March and is now threatening the country again. This year's €15.3 billion defense ministry spending compares to just under €14 billion last year, signaling a halt in a series of year-on-year falls. Procurement takes up €2.8 billion of the budget, up 50 percent on last year, but for a true picture of Italian procurement spending the annual top-up for domestic procurement provided by the Italian industry ministry must be added, which amounts to €2.64 billion, also up from last year. The total to spend on procurement therefore comes to €5.45 billion, up 26 percent on last year's €4.32 billion. Of the other two other spending categories in the ministry budget, Maintenance and Operations rises 23 percent to €2.15 billion, while personnel spending remains stable at €10.4 billion. “The rise in M&O spending follows claims by generals that cuts were damaging military readiness,” said Crippa. The budget was drawn up by defense minister Lorenzo Guerini, a member of the center-left Democratic Party which governs in a coalition government with the anti-establishment Five Star party. Since first entering government in 2018, Five Star has softened its anti-military stance, which saw it initially push to scrap the F-35 program. This year, the F-35 program receives €800 million to help conclude the purchase of the first 28 of Italy's planned 90 aircraft buy. A further €126 million is also budgeted to get the purchase of the next 27 aircraft underway. Other ongoing programs that get more funding in 2020 include the purchase of 650 new VTLM 2 vehicles – an upgrade of the army Lince vehicle, as well as a mid-life refurbishment for Italy's Storm Shadow missiles and the purchase of T-345 and T-346 jet trainers. Further programs also getting a dose of regular funding are Italy's new, €1.17 billion LHD vessel the Trieste, a €2 billion acquisition of 150 new Centauro II wheeled tanks and a €974 million purchase of 16 new CH-47F helicopters. Comparing the total envisaged price tag of some programs in the budget to the price listed in last year's budget reveals costs are rising. A plan to buy four new U-212 NFS submarines has risen from €2.35 billion to €2.68 billion this year, a hike of over €300 million. The ongoing purchase of ten PPA naval vessels has risen over €400 million to €4.27 billion. Some programs appear for the first time in the budget, including two new “DDX” destroyers for the Navy. No money is earmarked in 2020 but €4.5 million is due to be used for a de-risking study beginning in 2021. A second new entry is a listing for a “multi-mission, multi-sensor” Gulfstream G-550 jet. Without stating how many aircraft Italy plans to order, the budget gives the total price tag of the program as €1.23 billion and states that funding will start in 2021. The capabilities of the platform listed include command-and-control, “electronic superiority” and “electronic protection of forces.” An Italian analyst who declined to be named said the program was a reprisal of a long nurtured Italian plan for a sensor platform dubbed JAMMS, which would offer signals intelligence, communications relay and radar capabilities. The Italian Air Force declined to comment on the program. An illustration of the aircraft in the budget document resembles Israel's “Shavit” Signals Intelligence Gulfstream. Italy already flies two Gulfstream 550 Conformal Airborne Early Warning aircraft it purchased from Israel's IAI in 2012 as part of a swap deal under which Israel purchased 30 M-346 trainers from Italian firm Leonardo. The budget document states that after getting underway, the new program will take onboard future technology advancements and the benefits of “international cooperation accords.” The analyst said, “There is a plan to buy the platform now since the Gulfstream G550 is going out of production, then add Israeli systems in return for purchases by Israel from Italian industry.” Programs on the military's wish list which do not have any funding earmarked yet also get a mention in the budget document, starting with investment in the U.K.-led Tempest program for a future sixth-generation fighter. But the absence of cash for the program, which the U.K. and Sweden have already invested in, risked making Italy the weakest partner in the trio, wrote Italian defense publication RID. “In this way, there is the risk that Italy's ability to influence the development decreases and it will be weaker when it comes to future talks on the dividing of manufacturing,” the publication stated. The document also confirms Italy's interest in joining the U.S. Future Vertical Lift helicopter initiative to build next generation helicopters, which is currently being pursued by the United States only. Government officials have already mulled investing in the program using funds paid out by the EU to help the Italian economy rebound from COVID-19. Analysts have suggested that buying into FVL may overlap with work by Italy's Leonardo to build the AW249, a replacement for Italy's AW129 Mangusta attack helicopter. This year, the plan to complete a €2.7 billion purchase of 48 of the AW249 helicopters receives funding in the budget. “There is cash for the successor to the AW129 but seeing the mention of the FVL confirms Italy is also interested in that initiative,” said Crippa. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/10/28/italy-defense-budget-rebounds-despite-covid-crisis/

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  26 juin 2024 | International, Terrestre

  U.S Army awards L3Harris up to $871 Million IDIQ contract for fuzes

  The company will supply M762A1 and M767A1 Electronic-Time Fuzes on the five-year Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract.

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  15 février 2021 | International, Naval

  It will be at least a decade before Canada sees any of its new frigates

  New frigates are being packed with more combat capability than comparable ships of allies Murray Brewster It will be 2031, at the earliest, before the navy sees the first of its new frigates; a setback brought about partly by the fact Canada, Britain and Australia are still feeling their way around how to build the ultra-modern warship. The outgoing president of Irving Shipbuilding Inc., which is in charge of constructing combat ships for the federal government, said he anticipates steel will be cut on the first of the new generation high-end warships by mid-2024. "We have been trying to take an honest look at where we are and what it will take to build the ship," said Kevin McCoy who recently announced his retirement from the East Coast shipbuilder. The current estimate is that it will take up to seven-and-a-half years to build the surface combatant, a timeline being used by Britain's BAE Systems Inc., which is constructing the first of what's known as the Type 26 design. Both Canada and Australia are building their own variants. "Early on [in the shipbuilding process] estimates are not very good," said McCoy. "Early estimates are not very good for price; they're not very good for size; they're not not very good for duration," McCoy said. "The British ship has a seven-and-a-half year build cycle. So, we're locked in. We said our build cycle will be seven-and-a-half years as well." If they can find ways to speed up the process, they will, he said. ANALYSIS Battle of the budget: DND gears up to defend cost of new warships in the new year Serving military member sues DND over mould exposure on warship Ottawa awards $2.4B contract to finish building navy's supply ships If that timeline holds, it means the federal government's marquee shipbuilding strategy will be two decades old by the time it produces the warship it was principally set up to create. While Irving has been pumping out smaller, less complicated arctic patrol ships and Seaspan, in Vancouver, is building coast guard and science vessels, the strategy conceived by the former Conservative government was driven by the necessity of replacing the navy's current fleet of Halifax-class frigates. Originally, when the shipbuilding strategy was unveiled, it envisioned Canada receiving the first new frigate in 2017. A lot of water, wishful thinking and even money has gone under the bridge since then. Building off existing design The current Liberal government, since taking over in 2015 and embracing the strategy, has been opaque in its public estimates of the build time; suggesting, in some documents, a delivery time in mid-2020s while other more internal records have pegged the first new frigate in the 2027 timeframe. The Department of National Defence, in a statement, acknowledged some of the design and build intricacies are now better understood, and because of that; the first warship will be "approximately 2-3 years later than the previous estimate." A spokeswoman echoed McCoy's remarks about finding ways to move construction along. "We continue to look for efficiencies and are actively working with industry to accelerate the project in order to deliver this important platform to the RCN as soon as possible," said National Defence spokesperson Jessica Lamirande. One of the ways they could do that, she said, would be to construct some, less complex modules of the warship early, the way it has been in the navy's Joint Support Ship project at Seaspan's Vancouver Shipyard. $1 billion and counting: Inside Canada's troubled efforts to build new warships Industry briefing questions Ottawa's choice of guns, defence systems for new frigates McCoy, a blunt-talking former U.S. Navy admiral, suggested the expectations going to the surface combatant program were ultimately unworkable because the federal government came in expecting to do a so-called "clean sheet" design; meaning a warship built completely from scratch. It was the shipyard, he said, which ultimately inched the federal government toward building off an existing design because of the enormous risk and expense of purpose-built ships, a position the Liberals adopted in the spring of 2016. The selection of the British Type 26 design by the Liberal government has spawned criticism, a court challenge and will figure prominently in upcoming reports by the auditor general and the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Combat capability packed into ship The nub of the complaints have been that the frigate is not yet in the water and is still under construction in the United Kingdom. The defence department acknowledged that adapting the British design to Canadian expectations and desires will take a year longer than originally anticipated and is now not scheduled to be completed until late 2023, early 2024. Canada, McCoy said, can expect to pay no more $2.5 billion to $3 billion, per ship as they are produced, which is, he claimed, about what other nations would pay for a warship of similar capability. "This is a big ship, lots of capability" he said, indicating that full displacement for the new frigate will likely be about 9,400 tonnes; almost double the 4,700 tonnes of the current Halifax-class. How much will Canada's new frigates really cost? The navy is about to find out PBO pushes up cost estimate for Canada's frigate build by $8 billion McCoy said what is not generally understood amid the public concern over scheduling and cost is the fact that the Canadian version of the Type 26 will be expected to do more than its British and Australian cousins. Where those navies have different warships, performing different functions, such as air defence or anti-submarine warfare, Canada's one class of frigates will be expected to perform both because that is what the government has called for in its requirements. Dave Perry, a defence analyst and vice president of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, has studied the program and said he was surprised at the amount of combat capability that was being packed into the new warship. "On the one hand, Canada's one [class] of ship will have more combat capability than many of the other classes of ship that our friends and allies sail with, but it also adds an additional level of complexity and challenge getting all of that gear, all of that firepower into one single floating hull and platform," he said. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-shipbuilding-decade-frigates-1.5912961