6 avril 2022 | International, Aérospatial
Podcast: With New Leader, Where Does Boeing Defense Go Now?
Aviation Week editors discuss Ted Colbert's appointment and the challenges he faces as the new head of Boeing's $26 billion defense and space unit.
18 août 2020 | International, Aérospatial
Will U.S. Defense Cuts Delay Next-Gen Combat Aircraft Programs?
August 17, 2020
Many nations have suffered significant financial losses as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Will next-generation combat aircraft programs be delayed by future defense budgets cuts?
Aviation Week's Executive Editor for Defense and Space, Jen DiMascio, answers:
Even though defense budgets are likely to remain stable in the U.S. during the coming year, relief funding to combat the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to put pressure on spending over time. As a result, projects such as the U.S. Air Force's Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program could be slowed. Pentagon spending was already predicted to level off in the next few years, and the economic drop-off caused by the novel coronavirus and the torrent of debt the government is taking on to combat the pandemic adds even more pressure.
The situation today is even more extreme than during the 2008-09 global economic crisis, according to Craig Caffrey, senior aerospace industry analyst for forecast and MRO at the Aviation Week Network. Caffrey forecasts that COVID-19 could shrink the global economy by 4-6% over the next five years, sending worldwide defense spending down 5%, or $70-80 billion.
What all that means for next-generation fighter programs is difficult to say. The U.S. is already sacrificing NGAD funding for near-term needs. A bill to provide $700 billion for defense in fiscal 2021 in the House of Representatives would approximately halve funding for NGAD by $500 million for fiscal 2021 to offset an Air Force shortfall in fighter availability. Could such cutbacks slow development of next-generation efforts? It is hard to say, but constraints on spending are unlikely to ease.
In Europe, the UK is aiming to field its next-generation Tempest in 2035. So far, £2 billion ($2.6 billion) has been allocated for technology development and maturation, but Caffrey foresees strong economic headwinds over the next five years. “I don't see where the money comes from for the full scope of Tempest as currently envisaged,” he says.
The French-German Future Air Combat System (FCAS) may have more breathing room because the program is not expected to enter service until 2040. In the near-term, France, Germany and their new partner, Spain, are providing government aid to such high-tech programs to retain jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The real test will be whether funding can be sustained in 2022-23.
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury is lobbying for efforts such as EuroDrone and FCAS to continue, saying they will be required in the future. “We have the DNA to make them successful,” Faury told Aviation Week's Jens Flottau recently. “Europe feels the need to prepare for the sovereignty of the future, which includes the air and space power to protect your territory from the skies. I am very happy and optimistic that this is moving forward.”
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1 octobre 2021 | International, Aérospatial
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Air Force paints a digital future where data from satellites play central role
by Sandra Erwin In a few months the Air Force will start a series of experiments to try to connect fighter aircraft and other weapon systems into a single network so they can all share critical data and intelligence, much of which is collected by satellites in space. Will Roper, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, described the venture as the “first demonstration of what you could call ‘step 1' of ABMS.” ABMS is short for Advanced Battle Management System, and it is a hard concept to explain because it is not like a traditional piece of hardware or software. It can be best described as a network where data is piped in from sensors located in space, at sea, in the air or on the ground. That information would be instantly analyzed with artificial intelligence tools and shared across the network. This is the type of technology that will “allow us to be more collaborative,” Roper told reporters at the recent 2019 Air Space & Cyber symposium. Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein is “driving this idea across the Air Force,” said Roper. Goldfein has been a champion of ABMS and wants to make it a “large dollar item in our 2021 budget,” said Roper. The thinking is that the Air Force will spend less money on shiny new platforms and more on exploiting data and advanced networks. It would be like the “Internet of Things, but applied to military systems,” said Roper. Air Force leaders initially pitched the ABMS idea to Congress two years ago as a vision of the future where access to timely data is key to success in the battlefield. They suggested that the Air Force should invest in ABMS rather than spend billions on new command-and-control airplanes. Congress gave the plan a skeptical reception but the Air Force will continue to press its case. In a keynote speech at Air Force Association's Air Space & Cyber conference last week, Goldfein described the future as one of “multi-domain operations” where all weapons and military forces receive up-to-the-minute intelligence and are able to share that data, something that ABMS would make possible. “What I'm talking about is a fully networked force where Air Force paints a digital future where data from satellites play central role each platform's sensors and operators are connected,” said Goldfein. While the concept seems straightforward, putting it into practice is not. One of the challenges is how to handle the vast amounts of data available from satellites and the infrastructure required to bring this data to the ground, analyze the data and then transport it to where it's needed. Some of the crucial technologies that will enable ABMS or any similar efforts will come from the world of commercial space and cloud computing. The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center has recognized this as it pursues a project called CASINO, short for Commercially Augmented Space Inter Networked Operations. CASINO is a spinoff of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Blackjack program that is attempting to demonstrate the military utility of small satellites in low Earth orbit. SMC has made CASINO one of its signature efforts to show how commercial technology could be used to process and distribute data from large LEO constellations. The Pentagon's Silicon Valley-based Defense Innovation Unit on Sept. 10 awarded a contract of undisclosed value to Ball Aerospace and Microsoft to demonstrate cloud processing capabilities in support of the CASINO project. The companies will have to show how simultaneous, worldwide data streams from large, distributed constellations of small satellites can be processed quickly using Microsoft's Azure cloud and Ball Aerospace algorithms. This is about making satellite data more actionable more quickly, Azure Global vice president Tom Keane said. One of the questions this project seeks to answer is “what would it take to completely transform what a ground station looks like, and downlink that data directly to the cloud?” Keane said. Perhaps one option is to place electronically steered flat panel antennas on the roof of a data center to connect multiple LEO satellites. Ball Aerospace algorithms in this project will process data streams from up to 20 satellites. With the data in the cloud, customers can direct it to where it's needed. Clearly, there is a long way to go to achieve what Goldfein calls the “Air Force That We Need” — one where all U.S. and allied forces are connected and get relevant information quickly. But you have to start somewhere. https://spacenews.com/air-force-paints-a-digital-future-where-data-from-satellites-play-central-role/