US Navy creates innovation center, advisory board to focus investments

Sur le même sujet

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  21 octobre 2019 | International, Aérospatial

  Le commandement de l'Espace sera installé à Toulouse

  La ministre de la Défense a indiqué dimanche que le commandement militaire de l'Espace, dont la création a été annoncée la veille par le président de la République, sera située à Toulouse. Elle a également précisé les premiers moyens qui seront alloués à cette nouvelle branche militaire. Le commandement militaire de l'espace dont le président Emmanuel Macron vient d'annoncer la création sera implanté à Toulouse, a affirmé dimanche la ministre des Armées Florence Parly sur France Inter. Ce grand commandement "va se localiser à Toulouse, qui est le grand lieu de l'espace francais", a-t-elle détaillé au lendemain de l'annonce du chef de l'Etat. "Nous allons rassembler tous les moyens qui sont dispersés dans nos armées et qui contribuent à la bonne utilisation des moyens spatiaux, et créer un commandement de l'espace", qui "va commencer par environ 200 personnes puis va monter en puissance au fil du temps", a souligné la ministre. Espionnage, brouillage, cyberattaques, armes antisatellites... L'espace, indispensable aux opérations militaires, est devenu un champ de confrontation entre nations, mettant la France au défi de muscler ses capacités dans ce thé'tre hautement stratégique et de plus en plus militarisé. Les plus grandes puissances spatiales mondiales -- Etats-Unis, Chine et Russie -- sont engagées depuis plusieurs années dans une course pour la domination de l'espace. Un budget de 3,6 milliards d'euros La Loi de programmation militaire française (LPM) 2019-2025 prévoit un budget de 3,6 milliards d'euros pour le spatial de défense. Il doit notamment permettre de financer le renouvellement des satellites français d'observation CSO et de communication (Syracuse), de lancer en orbite trois satellites d'écoute électromagnétique (CERES) et de moderniser le radar de surveillance spatiale GRAVES. Ce que nous avons constaté, c'est que l'espace est devenu un espace de conflictualité", a expliqué Mme Parly. "Il y a 1.500 satellites autour de la Terre, il y en aura 7.000 dans dix ans, et ces satellites sont de plus en plus considérés comme des objets qui peuvent être espionnés ou modifiés." "Il ne faut pas être naïf, il faut pouvoir protéger ce qui est vital pour le fonctionnement de nos systèmes de transport, nos systèmes aériens, nos hôpitaux (...) et ce qui est essentiel au bon fonctionnement de nos forces (armées, ndr)", a-t-elle conclu, en promettant de donner plus de détails "dans une dizaine de jours" sur la stratégie française dans le spatial militaire. https://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/industrie/aeronautique-defense/le-commandement-de-l-espace-sera-installe-a-toulouse-823519.html

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  3 juin 2020 | International, Aérospatial

  COVID-19 Infects Defense Industry With F-35 Production Slowdown

  Steve Trimble May 27, 2020 This was supposed to be a relatively easy year for Lockheed Martin's F-35 production. As 2020 began, the stealth fighter program's three-year growth spurt had subsided after annual deliveries more than doubled between 2017 and 2019. Lockheed planned to deliver 141 F-35s in 2020, only seven more than in 2019. But the F-35 supply chain is not immune from the global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. After signaling during a first quarter earnings call in April that a production slowdown was likely, Lockheed confirmed the impact on May 19. The company issued a new forecast of 117-124 F-35 deliveries this year. If Lockheed is unable to recover in the second half, the slowdown would mark the first year-over-year decrease in F-35 deliveries since the program began. “However, we will accelerate production when we return to pre-COVID-19 conditions and could see this number decrease,” the company says. The company's new financial guidance reflects the lower F-35 delivery total, with net sales for the year falling to a range of $62.25-64 billion from $62.75-64.25 billion. Other large F-35 suppliers include Northrop Grumman (center fuselage, radar), Raytheon Technologies (engine, distributed aper-ture system) and BAE Systems (aft fuselage, electronic warfare suite). It was not immediately clear which customers and variants would be affected by the potential shortfall of 18-24 F-35 deliveries in 2020. The Defense Department is closely watching the F-35, its single-largest production system. So far, senior acquisition officials expect the overall impact of the novel coronavirus on weapon system production to be manageable. But the Pentagon leadership considers the military aircraft industry an exception. Although demand and domestic U.S. military spending remain intact, the military aviation supply chain's links to the collapsing commercial aircraft market is causing delays. “I think [military] aviation has had a more acute sensitivity to supplier disruptions, largely driven by the massive upheaval in the commercial aviation market,” said James Geurts, assistant secretary of the Navy for research, development and acquisition. “Many of the aerospace companies were blended between military and commercial, and with commercial just falling through the floor, their abilities to stay open and keep their workforce has been a little bit more challenged.” Another sector Geurts is watching is the market for command, control, communications and computers and intelligence (C4I). “We're trying to track all of it,” he says. “But the most immediate impact we've seen has been on aviation.” Lockheed's F-35 assembly line in Fort Worth was hit hard by the COVID outbreak in mid-April. One employee, Claude Daniels, died after reporting COVID-19-related symptoms to a supervisor. Another F-35 employee, who survived, broadcast a Facebook Live video from his hospital bed, pleading with his unionized co-workers to sanitize their workspaces even if it is not in their job description. The company's management has said that the F-35 assembly line adopted new protocols in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which included regularly sanitizing equipment and quarantining employees exposed by co-workers or others to the virus. The COVID-19 response is not the only pressure on the F-35's production system. Lockheed exceeded the overall delivery target by three aircraft in 2019, but slower production of the less mature F-35C airframe nearly caused the company to miss the annual goal. To compensate, Lockheed moved up deliveries of four F-35As originally scheduled for 2020 to the end of 2019, allowing the company to beat the delivery target by three aircraft instead of missing it by one. Before the impact of the virus, the F-35's global supply chain was already strained by the three-year production ramp-up from 2017 to 2019. Late part deliveries jumped to 10,000 in 2019 from 2,000 in 2017, according to a May report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Monthly parts shortages, meanwhile, leaped to 8,000 in July 2019 from 875 a year before, the GAO says. The shortages represent a fraction of the 300,000 parts in each F-35, but the trend offered a glimpse of the pressure on the supply chain to meet demand during the ramp-up. https://aviationweek.com/defense-space/supply-chain/covid-19-infects-defense-industry-f-35-production-slowdown

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  1 mai 2020 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Only 20 defense firms sought $17 billion in COVID loans. Now the Trump administration is weighing a fix.

  By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Because fewer than 20 firms sought to apply for $17 billion in federal loans for Defense Department suppliers hurt by the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration is weighing how to broaden the eligibility requirements, a top Pentagon official said Thursday. “The challenge is that this $17 billion worth of loans comes with some fairly invasive kind of riders, and I think companies have to think very carefully about whether that makes good business sense for them,” Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord said at a Pentagon news conference. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, whose agency is implementing the loans, is requiring public companies seeking a share of $17 billion in coronavirus-related relief offer an equity stake to the government. “It may not be as interesting as for private companies, so that's one of the differentiators I see,” Lord said. The loans were intended for companies operating top secret facilities and with DX-rated contracts, which means the Pentagon deems them of highest national priority. “I am not sure that companies with DX-rated contracts are the ones that have the most critical needs. They have had a little less than 20 companies reach out to date,” Lord said. The Treasury Department has been in consultation with the Pentagon, and it's been open to ways the loan program could be expanded ― potentially to firms the Pentagon designates, Lord said. “So I'm hoping that early next week, between the Treasury Department and the Department of Defense, we can come back with a little bit more fidelity to the defense industrial base to better identify who might most benefit from this particular money,” Lord said. The agency had set a May 1 deadline for applications. The $17 billion tranche in the CARES Act for COVID-19 relief was widely assumed to be targeted at Boeing, which is a prime defense contractor and had indicated that it might seek assistance. However, U.S. lawmakers have said the loans are intended to span the defense supply chain, said Andrew Hunter, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies's Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group. “I would just say the requirements under that program are pretty strict that," he said. "You have to be really in desperate need for financing and have no access to other forms of financing, you have to accept a lot of limits on how the business operates: [on] share buybacks, dividends, executive compensation. And so it's really been designed and set up as a lender of last resort to firms that really need that assistance.” https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/04/30/only-20-defense-firms-sought-17-billion-in-covid-loans-now-the-trump-administration-is-weighing-a-fix/