US Air Force would buy six more F-15EXs in 2025 under draft House bill

Sur le même sujet

• 

  11 janvier 2019 | International, Terrestre

  Textron finalizes acquisition of robotics company

  By: Valerie Insinna WASHINGTON — Textron's acquisition of robotics firm Howe & Howe Technologies stemmed from a late night channel surfing session, where a fortuitous viewing of “Jay Leno's Garage” turned into a big business deal. As its CEO Lisa Atherton watched the show at home with her husband, Howe & Howe's light tank drone wheeled across the screen. Textron had recently identified a gap in unmanned land vehicles, and this seemed to fit exactly the niche that the company was looking to fill. “I saw this tracked vehicle kind of flying through the woods and up and over the berms, and so I went and did a little research," Atherton told reporters on Jan. 10. Textron declared in October that it intended to purchase the Waterboro, Maine-based company. On Dec. 17, the deal was finalized, the company announced Thursday morning. The businesses have not disclosed the price or terms of the sale. Textron executives believe Howe & Howe, which specializes in innovative robotic ground vehicles, is a natural fit for their company, which is known for building unmanned systems — predominantly drones like the RQ-9 Shadow and maritime assets like the common unmanned surface vehicle that can deploy from a littoral combat ship to find mines. Meanwhile, Textron brings with it the ability to manufacture unmanned systems en masse and to support them in the field. Howe & Howe's senior vice president, Michael Howe, said his company's inventiveness, coupled with Textron's experience selling unmanned systems to the government, “makes for an extremely formidable combination.” Atherton said she is looking forward to getting Howe & Howe the investment dollars necessary to start work on new products and make existing ones more robust. “Mike and Geoff [Howe, the company's other founder] both have a ton of great ideas," she said. "They have ideas that they've sketched out in their books forever that they just haven't had the opportunity to do the investment for.” Several of Howe & Howe's robotic land vehicles have been evaluated by the U.S. Army. Its Ripsaw vehicle — the small unmanned tank seen on “Jay Leno's Garage” — has undergone testing at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey. But when sequestration slowed down funding of tests, the Howe brothers looked for other venues to promote it, landing the product a role in the 2015 classic “Mad Max: Fury Road.” “That speaks to their ingenuity, their ability to survive through sequestration as a small company,” Atherton said. Howe & Howe's RS2-H1 robot, invented to carry soldiers' gear, is competing against three other unmanned land vehicles for the Squad Multipurpose Equipment Transport program contract. Two Army infantry brigade combat teams and an undisclosed Marine unit are currently assessing the four contenders ahead of a downselect, Army Times reported last year. Atherton named that opportunity as one of the four big programs she's hoping Textron can win in 2019. Updated on 1/10/19 at 1:10 p.m with quotes from Textron CEO Lisa Atherton. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2019/01/10/textron-finalizes-acquisition-of-robotics-company

• 

  30 septembre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Bell teams with Collins Aerospace to deliver a high-performance solution for U.S. Army Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft

  Fort Worth, Texas (September 26, 2019) – Bell Textron Inc., a Textron Inc. (NYSE: TXT) company, announced a teaming agreement with Collins Aerospace Systems, a unit of United Technologies Corp. (NYSE: UTX), as Bell competes for the U.S. Army's Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA) Competitive Prototype program. Bell is designing a vertical lift aircraft, as part of the contract awarded in April of 2019, with advanced performance capabilities and high operational availability to meet the threats faced in multidomain operations. As the mission systems integrator, Collins Aerospace will deliver a new generation of avionics hardware and software featuring cyber-hardened and digital backbone solutions to the prototype. “This team has a lot of experience supporting attack reconnaissance requirements and will deliver a smart, lethal aircraft at an affordable cost,” said Keith Flail, vice president of Advanced Vertical Lift Systems at Bell. “The Army is looking for revolutionary solutions for warfighters and we are confident that our team has the right combination of innovative technology and experience to build an aircraft with transformative capabilities on a compressed timeline.” Collins Aerospace will also provide Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) tools and processes to configure and integrate mission avionics for the FARA. The company's use of the new MBSE methodologies will enable rapid mission capability insertions into the FARA platform. “By teaming with Bell, we can reduce the overall lifecycle costs and risks associated with this next generation of aircraft and effectively meet the FARA objectives in multidomain threat environments,” said Dave Schreck, vice president and general manager for Military Avionics and Helicopters at Collins Aerospace. “With a long history of providing avionics solutions to both Army and Special Operations aviators, Collins Aerospace is uniquely positioned to provide Bell with the cutting-edge cockpit technology necessary to enable warfighter mission success.” Although the configuration has not yet been revealed, the Bell FARA prototype takes advantage of technologies demonstrated on the V-280 Valor, Bell 525 and other Bell programs incorporating expertise in fly-by-wire flight controls, rotors and drives, as well as design to build technology that enhances sustainability, manufacturability and affordability. This team has the experience to produce an affordable, high-performance aircraft at reduced technical risk that will meet or exceed all requirements and provide reliable capability to the warfighter. To learn more about Bell and Future Vertical Lift, please visit https://www.bellflight.com/, and follow us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. https://www.collinsaerospace.com/en/newsroom/News/2019/09/bell-teams-collins-deliver-high-performance-solution-us-army-future-attack-reconnaissance-aircraft

• 

  16 janvier 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  JUST IN: Defense Department to Stand Up New Counter-Drone Office

  By Yasmin Tadjdeh The Pentagon will soon stand up a counter-unmanned aerial system office that will be headed by the Army, said the Defense Department's top weapons buyer Jan. 14. Following the Dubai Air Show in November, Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord visited numerous locations across the Middle East including U.S. military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The thing that was really top of everybody's mind were counter-UAS,” she said during a meeting with reporters hosted by George Washington University's Project for Media and National Security in Washington, D.C. “We see that small UAS are becoming a more popular weapon of choice ... [and] we need to be agile and pivot to that challenge.” Pentagon leaders recently decided to designate the Army as the executive agent for counter-drone technologies, Lord said. The new office will be stood up in Arlington, Virginia, in the Crystal City neighborhood. It will be staffed by around 60 people. “We are just finishing off on the policy that directs the activities,” she said. The office will examine the many counter-UAS efforts across the Defense Department and come up with three to five systems that are best for the military writ large and make sure they are effectively leveraged, Lord said. The Defense Department is bringing together a number of organizations, including the office of the director of operational test and evaluation and Defense Digital Service, to work on the effort. Robert Behler, the head of DOT&E, has a group conducting independent tests and evaluation of currently fielded systems, Lord noted. “Come April we will have that evaluation completed and written up. And that coincides [with] when we want to make some decisions about downselecting ... to the three to five systems that would be utilized,” she said. The department is examining a variety of sensor modalities and defeat mechanisms. “One size does not fit all,” Lord said. “You need a system with multiple sensors ... or defeat systems. And the key is really the command-and-control and then the communication across theater.” The office aims to thwart both small and large adversary UAS, she added. Countering rogue and enemy drones has long been an objective for the Defense Department, but recent high-profile events have thrown the technology into the spotlight. That includes an alleged Iranian attack on Saudi Aramaco facilities in September using unmanned aircraft. “One of the challenges is that we know that the adversary is very agile and updates their [tactics, techniques and procedures] ... very quickly,” Lord said. “We are looking at a very nimble system where we can push patches in the same day, if you will, so that we again can stay ahead of" the threat. The Pentagon is gung-go about tackling the issue, and senior leadership involvement and funding are increasing, she noted. In terms of the industrial base, counter-UAS is one of the acquisition and sustainment office's four key focus areas, Lord said. Others include microelectronics, 5G networks and hypersonics. The department plans to establish a hypersonics "war room." “We just decided last week that we would stand up a hypersonics war room to begin to look at the defense industrial base and begin to have different companies [come] in,” Lord said. The technology is the Pentagon's top research-and-development priority and it plans to buy large numbers of systems when they are mature enough to be fielded. Last week, Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy said missile manufacturers and other suppliers need to do more to boost their hypersonics manufacturing capability. “What we need to see is industry step up,” he said Jan. 10 during remarks at the Brookings Institution. “They've got to come forward and ... first and foremost, invest the time to work with our national lab network to understand how we've come forward with these technologies. But they're going to have to make investments to be able to produce these at scale.” https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/1/14/just-in-defense-department-to-stand-up-counter-drone-office