4 février 2019 | International, Naval

US Navy signs mammoth contract with Huntington Ingalls for two aircraft carriers

By:

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Navy has signed a $14.9 billion contract with shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls for two Ford-class aircraft carriers, the Navy announced Thursday evening.

By buying two carriers simultaneously, the Navy expects to save $4 billion, according to a Navy release.

Navy Secretary Richard Spencer hailed the deal as a team effort and said the contract will create stability for the skilled workforce and create savings as a result.

“Focusing on optimizing construction activities and material procurement, the team was able to achieve significant savings as compared to individual procurement contracts," Spencer said in the release. “One contract for construction of the two ships will enable the shipbuilder flexibility to best employ its skilled workforce to design once and build twice for unprecedented labor reductions while providing stability and opportunities for further efficiencies within the nuclear industrial base.”

The carriers were previously reported to cost about $24 billion, and the the Navy projected it would save about $4 billion by contracting for two Ford-class carriers.

A release from the office Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee Seapower subcommittee congratulated the Navy for closing the deal.

“This dual buy means even larger savings than projected for taxpayers and the certainty that our industrial base needs to retain and hire the employees who create the highest quality products for our sailors," Wittman said. "For Virginia it means thousands of reliable jobs and community development for the next decade and beyond. As one of the largest Navy shipbuilding contracts ever, I am proud to have led this effort and look forward to its success.”

https://www.defensenews.com/breaking-news/2019/01/31/us-navy-has-inked-a-contract-for-two-carriers-congressman-says/

Sur le même sujet

  • DARPA: Building Trusted Human-Machine Partnerships

    4 février 2019 | International, C4ISR

    DARPA: Building Trusted Human-Machine Partnerships

    A key ingredient in effective teams – whether athletic, business, or military – is trust, which is based in part on mutual understanding of team members' competence to fulfill assigned roles. When it comes to forming effective teams of humans and autonomous systems, humans need timely and accurate insights about their machine partners' skills, experience, and reliability to trust them in dynamic environments. At present, autonomous systems cannot provide real-time feedback when changing conditions such as weather or lighting cause their competency to fluctuate. The machines' lack of awareness of their own competence and their inability to communicate it to their human partners reduces trust and undermines team effectiveness. To help transform machines from simple tools to trusted partners, DARPA today announced the Competency-Aware Machine Learning (CAML) program. CAML aims to develop machine learning systems that continuously assess their own performance in time-critical, dynamic situations and communicate that information to human team-members in an easily understood format. “If the machine can say, ‘I do well in these conditions, but I don't have a lot of experience in those conditions,' that will allow a better human-machine teaming,” said Jiangying Zhou, a program manager in DARPA's Defense Sciences Office. “The partner then can make a more informed choice.” That dynamic would support a force-multiplying effect, since the human would know the capabilities of his or her machine partners at all times and could employ them efficiently and effectively. In contrast, Zhou noted the challenge with state-of-the-art autonomous systems, which cannot assess or communicate their competence in rapidly changing situations. “Under what conditions do you let the machine do its job? Under what conditions should you put supervision on it? Which assets, or combination of assets, are best for your task? These are the kinds of questions CAML systems would be able to answer,” she said. Using a simplified example involving autonomous car technology, Zhou described how valuable CAML technology could be to a rider trying to decide which of two self-driving vehicles would be better suited for driving at night in the rain. The first vehicle might communicate that at night in the rain it knows if it is seeing a person or an inanimate object with 90 percent accuracy, and that it has completed the task more than 1,000 times. The second vehicle might communicate that it can distinguish between a person and an inanimate object at night in the rain with 99 percent accuracy, but has performed the task less than 100 times. Equipped with this information, the rider could make an informed decision about which vehicle to use. DARPA has scheduled a pre-recorded webcast CAML Proposers Day for potential proposers on February 20, 2019. Details are available at: https://go.usa.gov/xE9aQ. The CAML program seeks expertise in machine learning, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, knowledge representation and reasoning, autonomous system modeling, human-machine interface, and cognitive computing. To maximize the pool of innovative proposal concepts, DARPA strongly encourages participation by non-traditional proposers, including small businesses, academic and research institutions, and first-time Government contractors. DARPA anticipates posting a CAML Broad Agency Announcement solicitation to the Federal Business Opportunities website in mid-February 2019. https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2019-01-31

  • Canada to participate in United States-led Operation PROSPERITY GUARDIAN

    19 décembre 2023 | International, Terrestre, Sécurité

    Canada to participate in United States-led Operation PROSPERITY GUARDIAN

    Today, the Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence, announced that Canada will participate in Combined Maritime Forces’ (CMF) Op PROSPERITY GUARDIAN, a United States-led operation announced by the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd J. Austin III.

  • Opinion: Why We Are Betting On 2022

    7 janvier 2022 | International, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR

    Opinion: Why We Are Betting On 2022

    Exciting new aerospace markets will continue to emerge and grow, and Aviation Week will provide you data and analysis about them.

Toutes les nouvelles