US Air Force conducts final test of Lockheed’s hypersonic missile

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  3 juillet 2018 | International, Naval

  Australia officially announces $26B frigate contract. Here are the build details

  By: Nigel Pittaway MELBOURNE, Australia ― Australia will acquire nine high-end anti-submarine warfare frigates from the end of the next decade under a deal with BAE Systems worth AU$35 billion (U.S. $26 billion). The announcement was formally made Friday at the ASC shipyard in Osborne, South Australia, by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Minister for Defence Marise Payne and Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne. A version of BAE Systems' City-class Type 26 ASW frigate, now under construction for the British Royal Navy, will be acquired under Australia's SEA 5000 Phase 1 project, also known as the Future Frigate Project. Referred to as the Global Combat Ship―Australia, or GCS-A, during the competition, the design will be known as the Hunter-class in Royal Australian Navy service and will replace the Navy's existing Anzac-class frigates. There has been speculation in the media that the decision to go with BAE may be driven, in part, by Australia's desire to secure strong terms with the U.K. as it negotiates a series of new trade agreements after Britain leaves the European Union. Payne noted Friday that the GCS-A design was selected because it was the most capable ASW platform. “This is a decision entirely based on capability, the best capability to equip the Navy in anti-submarine warfare,” she said. Regardless, news of BAE's win was welcomed in the United Kingdom, with Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson referring to it as the “biggest maritime defence deal of the decade.” “This £20 billion ‘deal of the decade' demonstrates how British defence plays a huge role in creating jobs and prosperity and is ‘Global Britain' in action,” he commented on social media. “Great to see our military and industrial links strengthen with Australia.” The ships will be built by ASC Shipbuilding in South Australia, using local workers and Australian steel, under the Turnbull government's continuous naval shipbuilding program. “What we are doing here is announcing our commitment to build the nine Future Frigates,” Prime Minister Turnbull said. “The Hunter-class frigates will be the most advanced anti-submarine warships in the world.” The Hunter-class frigates will be equipped with CEA Technologies-built CEAFAR phased array radar currently fitted to the Navy's post-anti-ship missile defense Anzac frigates, together with Lockheed Martin's Aegis combat system and an interface provided by Saab Australia. The Aegis combat system was mandated for all of Australia's major surface combatants by the Turnbull government in October 2017. The GCS-A design was selected in preference to Fincantieri's Australian FREMM, dubbed FREMM-A, a variant of the ASW-optimized FREMM frigate now in service with the Italian Navy; and the F-5000 from Navantia, based on an evolution of the Royal Australian Navy's Hobart-class air warfare destroyer, which in turn is a derivative of the Spanish Navy's F-100 Álvaro de Bazán class. An ASW capability was the highest priority for the Royal Australian Navy, according to Chief of Navy Vice Adm. Tim Barrett. “I spoke as recently as last night to the First Sea Lord, my equivalent in the [British] Royal Navy, and I am assured by his comments on just how successful this platform will be as the world's most advanced anti-submarine warfare frigate,” he said Friday. The first steel is due to be cut on prototyping activities for the build at Osborne in late 2020, with full production following in 2022. The first ship of the class will be delivered to the Royal Australian Navy in the late 2020s. Under the deal, the government-owned shipbuilder ASC will become a subsidiary of BAE Systems during the build, with the government retaining a sovereign share in the entity. The shipyard will revert to government ownership at the end of the project. Turnbull said the arrangement ensures BAE Systems is fully responsible and accountable for the delivery of the frigates, noting that Australia retains the intellectual property and a highly skilled workforce at the end of the program. “My expectation is that the next generation of frigates that comes after the ones we're about to start building at ASC will be designed and built in Australia,” he said. BAE System's global maritime systems business development director, Nigel Stewart, told Defense News that he welcomes the build strategy. “We were really pleased with that as an outcome because ASC has great capability. We always wanted to use the workforce, but this allows us to join ASC and BAE together much earlier, and we think that will be really positive,” he said. Stewart said the plan was for the Hunter-class build to follow the Type 26 activity in the U.K. by around five years, which will serve to de-risk the Australian program. BAE is due to deliver the first ship, HMS Glasgow, to the British Royal Navy in 2025, with entry into service in the 2027 time frame. “We cut steel for the first Type 26 in the U.K. in June 2017, and we'll cut steel for full production of the Hunter class in South Australia in 2022,” he said. “We'll run at an 18-month drumbeat in the U.K., and somewhere between 18 months and two years in Australia. That will keep a five-year gap, which is almost perfect. You are de-risking the Australian program in the U.K. and you don't get the obsolescence issues you would if there was a longer gap, so it's a really good program overlap.” In other news Friday, the Turnbull government announced it will set up a AU$670 million training and capability center for the Hunter-class frigates in Western Australia. Known as Ship Zero, the initiative will be established at HMAS Stirling, the Navy's Fleet Base West, at the shipbuilding facility in Henderson. Much of the training traditionally performed at sea will be transferred into the land-based facility. The capital works project will be considered by the Australian Parliament early next year, and construction is expected to commence in 2019. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/06/29/australia-officially-announces-26b-frigate-contract-here-are-the-build-details/

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  4 février 2021 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  To keep up with rivals, DoD nominee will weigh consolidation vs. innovation

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― President Joe Biden's nominee for deputy defense secretary, Kathleen Hicks, said she is “concerned” about consolidation in the defense industrial base, and that competition is needed to maintain an edge over China and Russia. Hicks, whose office would review deals that involve national security issues if she is confirmed by the Senate, told lawmakers Tuesday that she would work with them to ensure a healthy defense industrial base. The comments came amid market expectations that defense deal-making could take off in 2021. “Extreme consolidation does create challenges for innovation,” Hicks told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We need to have a lot of different good ideas out there. That's our competitive advantage over authoritarian states like China, and Russia. And so if we move all competition out, obviously, that's a challenge for the taxpayer. But it's also a challenge in terms of the innovation piece.” As the space sector and technological developments drive growth in the aerospace and defense sector and the pandemic weakens commercial aviation firms, companies are “likely to pursue opportunities for consolidation,” the consulting firm Deloitte said in a recent report. Firms could seek new merger and acquisition opportunities, the report said, to “capture more value, drive cost-competitiveness, or acquire targeted niche capabilities and emerging technologies” such as “advanced air mobility, hypersonics, electric propulsion, and hydrogen-powered aircraft.” Recent years have seen a number of major deals, including the combination of Harris and L3 Technologies, United Technologies Corp. and Raytheon; BAE Systems and Collins Aerospace, and General Dynamics and CSRA. Lockheed Martin's $4.4 billion acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne, announced in December, has yet to clear regulators. The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department also review mergers and acquisition activity in the defense sector. At Tuesday's hearing, Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal, whose state hosts General Dynamics Electric Boat, told Hicks a drop in the number of submarine suppliers from 17,000 to 5,000 over recent decades suggested broader problems for the defense industrial base, problems that he said were, “extremely alarming to me.” Blumenthal indicated Hicks had committed prior to the hearing to aid small suppliers struggling with the pandemic's economic fallout and to develop new small and medium suppliers. (This was one focus of DoD's acquisition and sustainment office under the previous administration.) “I'm hoping you will focus on the supply chain that is vitally important to suppliers like Electric Boat or Raytheon or any of our major sources of supply,” said Blumenthal, who has served as the top Democrat on SASC's Seapower Subcommittee. A broader theme for the hearing was how Hicks, whose job involves supervising the defense budget, would invest in forward-leaning technologies under a flat budget and divest from existing weapons platforms. Meanwhile, lawmakers grilled Hicks about whether she supported spending on nuclear modernization, shipbuilding and other programs with connections to lawmakers' home states. Acknowledging the political and budget tensions, Hicks said she wants to link future budgetary decisions with concepts for operations, to buy “capabilities that actually line up to theories of victory for how we are trying to pace challenges from China and Russia.” Other lawmakers told Hicks they wanted an easier paths for smaller, cutting edge firms from outside the Beltway to do business with the Pentagon and for them to scale production of their products, beyond the experimentation phase. “We've had testimony before this committee that many smaller companies, particularly in Silicon Valley, and in the technology field generally have given up on the Pentagon, it's too complicated is too lengthy is too expensive, even to fill out the forms,” said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine. For her part, Hicks said Tuesday she would “increase the speed and scale of innovation in our force,” and she would work to understand how alternative acquisitions methods are servings smaller non-traditional suppliers. She affirmed that those firms cannot survive on research and development funding alone. “I do think a sustain level of [research and development] investment is vital, but we actually have to field capabilities, and that's a place where DoD has really struggled,” she said, adding that exercises and experiments help demonstrate the value of new technologies. “When we can demonstrate value, then we're in a much better position to have a dialogue with Congress and with industry about where that where those capabilities can take us.” https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2021/02/02/to-keep-up-with-rivals-dod-nominee-will-weigh-consolidation-vs-innovation/

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  6 mai 2022 | International, Aérospatial

  USAF's Next Airborne Nuclear Command-And-Control Aircraft, Needs Four Engines

  The U.S. Air Force (USAF) plans to increase spending for its next airborne nuclear command-and-control aircraft, and it most likely will choose used aircraft.