10 juin 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Podcast: What Next For Boeing?
Boeing's space business notches a win, but many questions remain about the company's long-term future. Listen in as analysts Byron Callan and Ron Epstein join the podcast.
3 février 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
The Pentagon is racing against inflation for military might
By: Aaron Mehta
WASHINGTON — In 2017, the top two officials at the Pentagon — then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford — testified to Congress that the defense budget needs to have 3-5 percent annual growth over inflation each year through 2023 to ensure America's military success.
Dunford, speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2017, went as far as to say: “We know now that continued growth in the base budget of at least 3 percent above inflation is the floor necessary to preserve just the competitive advantage we have today, and we can't assume our adversaries will remain still."
Three years later, as the Trump administration prepares to unveil its fiscal 2021 budget request on Feb. 10, such growth appears impossible. The budget is expected to be largely flat, as a two-year budget deal reached last summer calls for $740 billion in defense spending in the next fiscal year, up just $2 billion from the enacted FY20 amount.
“The 3-5 percent goal was reasonable enough and absolutely needed,” said Mackenzie Eaglen, a budget analyst with the American Enterprise Institute. “But it is not happening. The defense top line for 2021 is negative real growth, aka declining.”
Susanna Blume, a defense analyst with the Center for a New American Security, said that certain parts of the defense budget, particularly maintenance and personnel costs, grow faster than the rate of inflation. “That's what's behind these comments about requiring a certain amount of real budget growth in order to sustain the joint force as it is today,” she said.
But there is a wild card, according to Ellen Lord, the Defense Department's top acquisition official: a series of reform efforts led by now-Defense Secretary Mark Esper, which so far have accounted for $5 billion in savings.
“We're getting more and more efficient. That is obviously what Secretary Esper is focused on with his defensewide review, that we are cutting out administrative tasks and a variety of portions of programs to make sure we return those savings to our critical modernization efforts such as [artificial intelligence], hypersonics and so forth,” Lord said during a Jan. 31 news conference at the Pentagon. “We are always having to look very carefully at our budgets and make sure we triage them to focus on the critical few. So we're always concerned, but we're always going to work it.”
How much of that expected growth gap can be filled by Esper's efficiency drive is difficult to pin down. Blume said its “certainly possible that efficiencies could make up some of that gap,” but whether the work that has been done now and is planned in the near term will be enough “are questions we don't have answers to today.”
Added Eaglen: “Efficiencies alone will not get the Pentagon its 3-5 percent growth in actual dollars to reinvest. The defensewide review only yielded $5 billion, and the way it works with these drills is that the money doesn't necessarily move from pot A to pot B as a result."
“But that doesn't mean it is not worth doing. Any money amount is helpful. And the exercise is also about getting the bureaucracy to shift its time, tasks and attention to great power competition as much as it's about shifting funds into higher priorities that support the strategy,” Eaglen said.
If one of the Pentagon's big bets work out, that could be a real game-changer, Blume said. Those bets include efforts to replace a Defense Logistics Agency warehouse using a 3D printer as well as attempts by the Air Force to rapidly develop, prototype and produce fleets of planes. If one of them goes well, Blume said, “you can potentially start to bend some of those cost curves.”
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15 novembre 2021 | International, Aérospatial
Dubai Airshow team aims to help aerospace sector recover from pandemic
Amid a decline in aerospace sector revenues caused by the coronavirus pandemic, organizers hope the event will contribute to the industry's recovery and shape its future.
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21 novembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
DARPA: CODE Demonstrates Autonomy and Collaboration with Minimal Human Commands
Ground and flight tests highlight CODE-equipped UASs' ability to collaboratively sense and adapt to locate and respond to unexpected threats and new targets In a recent test series at Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, DARPA's Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program demonstrated the ability of CODE-equipped Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) to adapt and respond to unexpected threats in an anti-access area denial (A2AD) environment. The UASs efficiently shared information, cooperatively planned and allocated mission objectives, made coordinated tactical decisions, and collaboratively reacted to a dynamic, high-threat environment with minimal communication. The air vehicles initially operated with supervisory mission commander interaction. When communications were degraded or denied, CODE vehicles retained mission plan intent to accomplish mission objectives without live human direction. The ability for CODE-enabled vehicles to interact when communications are degraded is an important step toward the program goal to conduct dynamic, long-distance engagements of highly mobile ground and maritime targets in contested or denied battlespace. “The test series expanded on previously demonstrated approaches to low bandwidth collaborative sensing and on-board planning. It demonstrated the ability to operate in more challenging scenarios, where both communications and GPS navigation were denied for extended periods,” said Scott Wierzbanowski, DARPA program manager for CODE. During the three-week ground and flight test series in a live/virtual/constructive (LVC) environment, up to six live and 24 virtual UASs served as surrogate strike assets, receiving mission objectives from a human mission commander. The systems then autonomously collaborated to navigate, search, localize, and engage both pre-planned and pop-up targets protected by a simulated Integrated Air Defense System (IADS) in communications- and GPS-denied scenarios. “The demonstrated behaviors are the building blocks for an autonomous team that can collaborate and adjust to mission requirements and a changing environment,” said Wierzbanowski. The DARPA team also has advanced the infrastructure necessary to support further development, integration, and testing of CODE as it transitions to future autonomous systems. Achievements include incorporation of third-party autonomy algorithms into the current software build, the creation of a government repository and lab test environment for the CODE algorithms, and the successful demonstration of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory White Force Network capability to provide constructive threats and effects in an LVC test environment. CODE's scalable capabilities could greatly enhance the survivability, flexibility, and effectiveness of existing air platforms, as well as reduce the development times and costs of future systems. Further development of CODE and associated infrastructure will continue under DARPA until the conclusion of the program in spring 2019, followed by full transition of the CODE software repository to Naval Air Systems Command. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-11-19