Ukrainian brigade says 19 killed in Russian missile strike last week | Reuters

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  8 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Arms firms fret over delays in Franco-German fighter project

  PARIS — France's Dassault Aviation and Europe's Airbus have stepped up pressure on France and Germany to agree the next stage of a planned fighter project, warning Europe's arms industry and long-term security could suffer from delays. The two companies are the leading industrial partners in a project to build a futuristic swarm of manned and unmanned warplanes, announced by the leaders of France and Germany two years ago and expanded earlier this year to include Spain. Dassault and Airbus won a 65-million-euro contract in January to develop the concept for the Future Combat Air System (FCAS) but await a new contract to build demonstrators for interlinked fighters, drones and an “air combat cloud” by 2026. Dassault Aviation Chief Executive Eric Trappier told a conference of policymakers last month that the demonstrator contract should have been launched in September but this was now slipping towards end-year. He called it “indispensable” to avoid any further delays in order to maintain the 2026 deadline. No reason has been given for the delays. On Monday evening, Dassault and Airbus amplified those warnings with a joint statement. “If Europe does not move forward — and move forward quickly — on this program, it will be impossible to maintain the development and production capabilities needed for a sovereign defense industry,” the companies said. The warplane system is expected to be operational from 2040, with a view to replacing Dassault's Rafale and the four-nation Eurofighter, in which Airbus represents both Germany and Spain. The new project faces competition from Britain and its plans for a new combat jet dubbed “Tempest”. The fighter developments have split the current Eurofighter consortium and led to a shake-up of industrial alliances as Italy joins Eurofighter partner Britain on Tempest, turning its back on Germany and Spain, while Sweden has opened the door to abandoning its independent stance by co-operating on Tempest. The FCAS is also overshadowed by differences between France and Germany over export policy after Germany imposed a ban on arms exports to Saudi Arabia over the death of killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi a year ago by Saudi operatives. The ban, recently extended to March, has raised questions over a long-delayed Saudi border systems contract run by Airbus. Airbus Defence and Space Chief Executive Dirk Hoke called in a magazine interview last week for the export ban to be relaxed. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has said there is no reason for the moratorium to be lifted. France and Germany are expected to discuss the issue at ministerial meetings this week. AIRBUS SETBACK IN SPAIN Airbus meanwhile faces a battle to shore up its position as a top defense contractor in Spain after losing its place as the representative of Spain's interests on the upcoming fighter project to local defense electronics firm Indra Sistemas. Spain last month named Indra as contractor for the Spanish share of the Franco-German-led FCAS project, displacing Airbus from the Spanish coordinator role it had held on Eurofighter. Airbus officials have pledged to try to overturn the move but a Spanish defense source told Reuters there was no change in the decision. Indra declined to comment. Publicly, Airbus has said it was surprised by the decision but has pledged to continue to defend Spain's best interests. Dassault will meanwhile mark a long-awaited milestone on Tuesday when it delivers the first of 36 Rafales to India, the culmination of a fighter procurement process that lasted almost 20 years and involved the cancellation of a much larger deal. La Tribune reported on Monday that France and India were discussing a possible repeat order for 36 more Rafales. (Additional reporting by Emma Pinedo Gonzalez in Madrid, Tassilo Hummel in Berlin, Editing by Deepa Babington) https://business.financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/arms-firms-fret-over-delays-in-franco-german-fighter-project

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  3 mars 2021 | International, Aérospatial

  Electronic warfare system production starts for U.S. Air Force F-15s

  The all-digital EPAWSS enables pilots to monitor, jam, and deceive threats in contested airspace

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  18 mars 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  Army selects companies to continue in long-range assault aircraft competition

  By: Jen Judson WASHINGTON — The Army has selected Bell and Sikorsky to enter into a competitive demonstration and risk reduction effort ahead of the start of the Future Long-Range Assault Aircraft, or FLRAA, program of record. The service is on a tight timeline to field a new long-range assault aircraft by 2030. The CDRR will consist of two phases that will last roughly one year each. The companies will deliver initial conceptual designs, an assessment of the feasibility of requirements and trade studies using model-based systems engineering. The competition for the program of record will begin in 2022 with a plan to field the first unit equipped in 2030. Congress added $76 million in funding to the aircraft program's top line in fiscal 2020 to drive down technical risk and speed up delivery. The money, which Congress approved as part of its FY20 appropriations bill signed into law in December, will fund the CDRR effort. The Army completed its Joint Multi-Role Technology Demonstration, or JMR TD, for which Bell and the Sikorsky-Boeing team each built aircraft to help the service understand what is possible for a future aircraft — mainly to replace the UH-60 Black Hawk. “These agreements are an important milestone for FLRAA,” Patrick Mason, the Army's aviation program executive officer, said in a statement issued March 16. “The CD&RR continues to transition technologies from the JMR-TD effort to the FLRAA weapons system design. We will be conducting analysis to refine the requirements, conceptual designs, and acquisition approach. Ultimately, this information and industry feedback are vital to understanding the performance, cost, affordability, schedule risks and trades needed to successfully execute the FLRAA program.” Bell has flown its V-280 Valor tilt-rotor demonstrator for two years in the JMR-TD and has logged more than 160 hours of flight time on the experimental aircraft. Sikorsky and Boeing's SB-1 Defiant coaxial demonstrator had a more difficult time getting off the ground due to issues in manufacturing its rotor blades. Its first flight was in March 2019. Even though Defiant has flown for a significantly reduced amount of time, the Army has determined it has enough data to move forward on its FLRAA program rather than extend the JMR TD to wait for the Sikorsky-Boeing team to log flight time. Brig. Gen. Wally Rugen, who is in charge of the service's future vertical lift modernization efforts, said last spring that because of the data collected through the JMR TD process as a well as additional studies and modeling, the service now thinks it has enough information to move more quickly into a full and open competition for FLRAA. Lt. Gen. Paul Ostrowski, the military deputy to the acquisition chief, said in a Senate Armed Services Airland Subcommittee hearing around the same time that the Army is presenting an acquisition strategy to the Pentagon's acquisition chief focusing on a nondevelopmental item approach to procuring FLRAA. That route, Ostrowski said, could lead to a competitive downselect by FY22. The extra funding provided by Congress will give the service the ability to continue to fly and burn down that inherent risk in developing a new helicopter. “What [that] may do as we hit those gates, is allow us to take what was going to be a primary budget, really a starting budget for the Army in ‘23 and ‘24, and potentially move that selection back to ‘23,” Rugen said recently. “We are not going to go to selection if, number one, we don't have requirements stable, we don't have resources stable, and, number two, the technology is not there.” The Army already has had a robust technology demonstrator program, including an extension, Rugen said, but that type of effort doesn't garner the same data as a prototype demonstration or a full-up weapon system. “In the CDRR [competitive demonstration and risk reduction], we're really trying to develop a weapons system, not the tech demonstrator,” Rugen said. “So we're trying to take it to the next level.” The CDRR will assess a laundry list of technologies identified through an Office of the Secretary of Defense-conducted independent technology readiness assessment, which would require additional evaluation to reduce risk, according to Rugen. Some of these technologies include the powertrain, drivetrain and control laws of the aircraft. “When we look at the software involved in flight controls, we have to really reduce risk there,” Rugen noted. The CDRR will also allow the Army to work on the integration of its mission systems. https://www.defensenews.com/land/2020/03/16/army-selects-companies-to-continue-on-in-long-range-assault-aircraft-competition/