Nouvelles

Sept des principales entreprises britanniques de l'aérospatiale et de la défense ont rejoint «Team Tempest», le consortium qui vise à développer un avion de combat de haute technologie de nouvelle génération pour la RAF. Il s'agit de Bombardier Belfast, Collins Aerospace, GE Aviation UK, GKN Aerospace, Martin Baker, QinetiQ et Thales UK. Ces entreprises vont maintenant travailler aux côtés des principaux partenaires de «Team Tempest» : BAE Systems, Leonardo UK, MBDA UK, Rolls-Royce et le ministère de la défense, afin d'accélérer le développement de nouvelles technologies aériennes de combat. Flightglobal et Defense-aerospace.com du 20 juillet

Le Fonds européen de défense sera doté de 7 milliards d'euros pour la période 2021-2027, une somme nettement inférieure aux 13 milliards appelés par la France. Le Fonds vise à «favoriser la compétitivité, l'efficacité et la capacité d'innovation de la base industrielle et technologique de défense européenne, en soutenant des actions de collaboration et de coopération transfrontalière dans toute l'Union, à chaque étape du cycle industriel des produits et technologies de défense», indique le Conseil Européen. Le budget dévolu à l'espace sera quant à lui de 13,3 milliards d'euros (constants 2018) pour la période 2021-2027. Le projet initial était de 16 milliards d'euros courants, soit environ 14 milliards d'euros constants 2018. Ensemble de la presse du 22 juillet

NAVY Lockheed Martin Corp., Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., Fort Worth, Texas, is awarded an $861,731,778 modification (P00040) to previously-awarded fixed-price incentive (firm target), firm-fixed-price contract N00019-17-C-0001. This modification exercises options to procure eight Lot 14 F-35A Lightning II repositioned aircraft as a result of the Republic of Turkey's removal from the F-35 program, and six Lot 14 F-35A aircraft for the Air Force. Additionally, this modification establishes undefinitized line items that provides recurring engineering in support of the modification of the eight Lot 14 F-35A Lightning II repositioned aircraft to a full operationally capable F-35A Air Force configuration. Work will be performed in Fort Worth, Texas (63%); El Segundo, California (14%); Warton, United Kingdom (9%); Orlando, Florida (4%); Nashua, New Hampshire (3%); Baltimore, Maryland (3%); San Diego, California (2%); various locations within the continental U.S. (1.3%); and various locations outside the continental U.S. (0.7%). Work is expected to be completed by May 2026. Fiscal 2020 aircraft procurement (Air Force) funds for $848,881,778 will be obligated at time of award. No funds will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. Undersea Signal Systems Inc., Columbia City, Indiana, is awarded a $28,323,687 cost-plus-fixed-fee-contract to develop a prototype sonobuoy, known as Extended Range Directional Frequency Analysis and Recording (ER-DIFAR), to address new and quiet threat submarine targets. Work will be performed in Columbia City, Indiana, and is expected to be completed by July 2024. The total cumulative value of this contract is $28,323,687. This is a three-year base contract with one one-year option period. The base period is $24,128,769 and the option year is $4,194,918. Fiscal 2019 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $50,000; and fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $4,061,000 are obligated at time of award. Funds in the amount of $50,000 will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under N00014-19-S-B001, “Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology.” Since proposals are received throughout the year under the long range BAA, the number of proposals received in response to the solicitation is unknown. The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N00014- 20-C-2015). General Dynamics Missions Systems Inc., McLeansville, North Carolina, is awarded a $13,553,807 cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-only modification to previously-awarded contract N61331-11-C-0017 to exercise an option for engineering support for ongoing development, test and production of the Surface Mine Countermeasure Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (SMCM UUV) program, also known as Knifefish. Work will be performed in Quincy, Massachusetts (52%); McLeansville, North Carolina (27%); Braintree, Massachusetts (10%); Hanover, Maryland (5%); Reston, Virginia (5%); and Ann Arbor, Michigan (1%). The Knifefish program will provide persistent volume and bottom mine hunting capability in a contested environment. This option exercise is for engineering support hours to support a number of efforts, including test and evaluation, engineering change proposal development and upgrade initiatives. Work is expected to be completed by September 2021. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy); and fiscal 2020 other procurement (Navy) funding in the amount of $12,500,000 will be obligated at time of award. Funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, D.C., is the contracting activity. Navatek LLC,* Honolulu, Hawaii, is awarded a $9,170,852 cost-plus-fixed-fee completion contract with no option periods for the talent and technology for Navy Power and Energy Systems. Work will be performed in Honolulu, Hawaii (50%); and Columbia, South Carolina (50%). The work to be performed will advance the state-of-the-art autonomous command and control of shipboard power systems, to include next-generation integrated power and energy systems, in order to harness the full energy available in the Navy's ships to meet critical mission needs. Work is expected to be completed by July 2023. The total cumulative value of this contract is $9,170,852. Fiscal 2020 research, development, test and evaluation (Navy) funds in the amount of $9,170,852 are obligated at time of award. Funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was competitively procured under N00014-19-S-B001, “Long Range Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for Navy and Marine Corps Science and Technology.” Since proposals are received throughout the year under the long range BAA, the number of proposals received in response to the solicitation is unknown. The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N00014-20-C-1106). AIR FORCE BAE Systems Technology Solutions and Services Inc., Rockville, Maryland, has been awarded a $495,482,136 firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee and cost-reimbursable indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the Instrumentation Range Support Program. This contract provides for serviceable components and subsystems for instrumentation tracking systems, worldwide for both foreign and domestic government agencies to include radars, telemetry and optical range mission systems, flight termination systems, data acquisition systems and Global Positioning Systems. Work will be performed on participating ranges in the program, including Air Force, Army, Navy, NASA, Department of Energy, as well as foreign ranges in the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Republic of Korea and Switzerland. Work is expected to be completed Sept. 30, 2027. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition and three offers were received. Fiscal year 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $116,235 are being obligated, on a delivery order, at the time of award. This contract has a ceiling amount of $945,234,462. The 45th Contracting Squadron, Patrick Air Force Base, Florida, is the contracting activity (FA2521-20-D-0005). National Native American Construction Inc., Coeur D Alene, Idaho (FA4620-20-D0005); Northcon Inc., Hayden, Idaho (FA4620-20-D-0006); Alutiiq General Contractors LLC, Tacoma, Washington (FA4620-20-0008); RORE Inc., San Diego, California (FA4620-20-0009); M.J. Takisaki Inc., Seattle, Washington (FA4620-20-D-0010); and WHH Nisqually-Garco JV 2, Olympia, Washington (FA4620-20-D-0012), have been awarded a not-to-exceed $95,000,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for design-build construction efforts at Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington. Work will be performed at Fairchild AFB, Washington, and is expected to be completed June 30, 2025. This award is the result of a competitive acquisition, and 10 offers were received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $500 are being obligated to each at the time of award. The 92nd Contracting Squadron, Fairchild AFB, Washington, is the contracting activity. Richland Industries LLC, Pulaski, Tennessee, has been awarded a $24,800,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, firm-fixed-price contract for simplified acquisition of base engineering requirements. This contract will provide for a streamlined means to complete minor construction projects that encompass a broad range of sustainment, maintenance and repair and research development testing and evaluation projects on real property at Arnold Engineering Development Complex, Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee. Work will be performed at Arnold AFB, Tennessee, and is expected to be completed July 19, 2025. This award is the result of a competitive service-disabled, veteran-owned, small-business, set-aside acquisition with 10 offers received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $123,731 are being obligated at the time of award. Air Force Test Center, Arnold Air Force Base, Tennessee, is the contracting activity (FA9101-20-D-0001). Vanguard Pacific LLC, Foley, Alabama, has been awarded a $7,304,129 firm-fixed-price contract for protective coating and sign maintenance. This contract provides for airfield rubber removal, striping of airfield, streets and parking lots, protective coating and sign maintenance. Work will be performed at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, and Davidsonville and Brandywine communications sites, and is expected to be completed Aug. 4, 2025. This award is the result of a competitive service disabled veteran owned small business set aside acquisition and one offer was received. Fiscal 2020 operations and maintenance funds in the amount of $3,776 are being obligated at the time of award. The 316th Wing, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, is the contracting activity (FA2860-20-D-0003). ARMY DRS Sustainment Systems Inc., St. Louis, Missouri, was awarded an $189,828,895 hybrid (cost-no-fee, cost-plus-fixed-fee, firm-fixed-price) contract for development, production, deployment and support of the Mobile-Low, Slow, Small Unmanned Aircraft System Integrated Defeat System. Bids were solicited via the internet with one received. Work locations and funding will be determined with each order, with an estimated completion date of July 30, 2025. U.S. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity (W31P4Q-20-D-0031). Russell Construction Co. Inc., Davenport, Iowa, was awarded a $10,284,300 firm-fixed-price contract to construct a Special Operations Forces assessment and selection training complex. Bids were solicited via the internet with 10 received. Work will be performed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with an estimated completion date of Sept. 17, 2022. Fiscal 2020 military construction, defense-wide funds in the amount of $10,284,300 were obligated at the time of the award. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wilmington, North Carolina, is the contracting activity (W912PM-20-C-0018). *Small Business https://www.defense.gov/Newsroom/Contracts/Contract/Article/2280473/source/GovDelivery/

Because open-source software lacks the same kind of cyber certification that comes with more sensitive information, it is fertile ground for start-ups looking to work on military data, provided each service makes an open-source library available. By KELSEY ATHERTONon July 20, 2020 at 7:01 AM ALBUQUERQUE: Venture capitalists want the Pentagon to be a good market. But for an industry that makes many unsuccessful bets in the promise that just a few pan out spectacularly, marketing software exclusively to the Pentagon poses an almost unacceptable risk. To ease startups into contracting, investors suggest the Army should provide unclassified, open-source data as the Air Force already does. Near the top of his investors' wishlist, says Stu Solomon, CTO of intelligence provider Recorded Future, is removing “a lot of the friction necessary to get innovation into the government without having to be directly aligned or affiliated with the big solution integrators.” Hitching new technology to a company already firmly ingrained in the Pentagon's ecosystem is a popular way to shepherd new software through the acquisitions process. It is also partly explains how, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in military contracts going to Silicon Valley companies, tech adoption seems as slow from the Valley as elsewhere. Solomon's remarks came during a panel at AFCEA's 2020 AFCEA Army Signal conference. Recorded Future was founded in 2008, received early funding from IN-Q-TEL, received a contract from DIU in 2017, and a contract from Cyber Command in 2020. Much of Recorded Future's product is built on ingesting open-source information and offering analysis. As a feature, that meant the company could sustain itself in the commercial market, selling enterprise software, while still planning long-term to contract with the military, DHS, and intelligence services. “If you think this is eventually going to be a market that matters to you, you're not going to be able to wait four years for the procurement process to mature as your product matures,” said Elizabeth Lawler, founder of Founder of AppLand. If a startup's focus is solely on processing classified data, the capital investors need to be aligned directly with that goal to fund it since getting certified to handle classified material is one of the major sources of cost and friction. “My current startup, focused on providing real-time up-to-date software images, works on things that are less sensitive as a starting point,” said Lawler, “for example, some of the code bases in the Air Force's open source code repository.” Because open-source software lacks the same kind of cyber certification that comes with more sensitive information, it is fertile ground for start-ups looking to work on military data, provided the service makes an open-source library available. “When it comes to this Valley of Death, I really view what we do when we start companies as an awful lot like a really difficult special forces mission,” said Andy Palmer, co-founder and CEO of data management company Tamr. “When you go in, you drop onto the ground to start a company, with a small team of people, and limited resources, and what oftentimes feels like an unreasonable objective. It's hand to hand combat for much of it, it's not pretty. The goal is survival.” So, if the Army wants to bring new data tools to the battlefields of the future, it could start by creating open-source environments that allow companies to solve problems, at a smaller scale and without the hurdles of classification, suggested several panelists https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/startups-need-free-data-to-work-with-army-venture-capitalists

By: Andrew Chuter LONDON — The first element of a likely $7.5 billion upgrade of the British armed forces' satellite-telecommunications capabilities has finally been signed by the Ministry of Defence and Airbus Defence and Space. The deal, worth more than $630 million, will see Airbus build a new telecommunications satellite as a stop gap to bolster military capabilities ahead of the introduction of a new generation of space craft scheduled to start entering service towards the end of the decade. Airbus and the MoD have been locked in negotiation over the deal to construct the satellite, known as Skynet 6A, since the company was nominated in 2017, without a competition, as the preferred supplier. Under the terms of the deal the satellite, based on Airbus' Eurostar Neo spacecraft, will be developed, assembled and tested in the UK. Planned launch date is 2025. In a statement Airbus said the contract also covers technology development programs, new secure telemetry, tracking and command systems, launch, in-orbit testing and ground segment updates to the current Skynet 5 system. At one point defense officials here were sufficiently concerned about the drawn-out negotiations for Skynet 6A delaying the space crafts in-service date that they a contract with Airbus to start work on long-lead items ahead of the main deal being sealed. The deal will supplement a fleet of existing spacecraft built by Airbus as part of the Skynet 5 space telecommunications network operated by the company under a private finance initiative (PFI) deal which has been in operation since 2003. Operation of the Skynet ground stations was also included in the deal. The PFI, including ground station element, ends in 2022. A competition to run the ground stations as part of the wider Skynet 6 program is already in play, with Airbus, Babcock, BT and Serco all bidding to secure the contract for what is called the Service Delivery Wrap. The third main element of Skynet 6, known as Enduring Capability,will see industry compete to replace existing Skynet 5 satellites with a fleet of new generation beyond line of sight communication assets. The early stages of that competition is already underway. In-service date for the first of the new communications assets is around 2028. Announcing the satellite deal 24 hours ahead of the launch of the virtual Farnborough air show getting underway July 20, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said the “newest contested frontier is space and so we need to provide resilience and better communications for our forces. Skynet 6A is one of many solutions we shall be investing in over the next decade. This government recognizes the urgent need to defend and promote space capabilities.” “British defense must continue to innovate and transform, particularly in cyber and space,” Wallace said. Confirmation of the satellite deal by Wallace comes just two weeks after the British government took a $503 million stake alongside Indian company Bharti Global in the rescue of failed broadband constellation supplier OneWeb. OneWeb is based in the UK but its satellites are built in Florida in a partnership between Airbus and OneWeb. So far, 74 satellites out of an initial requirement for 648 have been launched. Having been denied access by the European Union to the precise military navigational signals provided by their Galileo satellites as a result of Brexit, the British are hoping they can develop the small spacecraft operated by OneWeb to provide military-grade positioning, navigation and timing data for the armed forces. OneWeb satellites could also find themselves developed for use by the British military as part of Skynet 6′s Enduring Capability requirement, said an industry executive here, who asked not to be named. Space is expected to have top billing alongside cyber, artificial intelligence and other cutting-edge technologies in the upcoming integrated defense, security and foreign policy review being conducted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors. Creation of a Space Command is likely to figure in a space defense policy being pulled together by the MoD. The bones of that policy could be presented to four-star-level officials in the next few weeks. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/07/20/airbus-gets-630-million-deal-under-uk-militarys-skynet-6-push

By: Andrew Chuter LONDON – A raft of top systems suppliers have been recruited to join the team leading Britain's development of the Tempest next-generation fighter aircraft. Bombardier in Northern Ireland, GKN, Martin Baker and Qinetiq, alongside the UK arms of Collins Aerospace, GE Aviation and Thales, have signed up to collaborate with the BAE Systems-led team working on the future air combat system, it was announced July 20 on what should have been the opening day of the Farnborough air show before Covid-19 caused the event's cancellation. At the same time as the announcement, Sweden's Saab revealed it was setting up a UK hub to potentially participate in future combat air systems work between the two nations. It's been almost two years to the day when the wraps were taken off a plastic mock-up of a Tempest fighter at the Farnborough show. The British revealed a BAE-led partnership, also involving Leonardo, MBDA, Rolls-Royce, that would begin investigating the technologies required for a future combat air system. Some $2.5 billion has so far been committed to the program. Now, just months before an outline business case to develop the program further is due to be delivered to the UK government, Team Tempest, as the industrial team is known, has signed up its first seven systems suppliers. With the first phase of the new partnerships signed, the companies will seek opportunities to join forces on established projects and developments with the core Team Tempest partners. More than 60 technology demonstration activities are currently underway on future combat air systems in the UK employing 1800 people – a number expected to grow to 2500 by the end of the year. In a statement, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said he was “delighted seven more companies have joined this mission to work in collaboration with the MoD, under the Team Tempest banner. They will bring the ambition, invention and expertise that will deliver the breakthroughs we will depend on for decades to come.” The rising employment levels and increasing industrial support comes at a crucial time for a program which will pretty much dictate Britain's future position in the defense industrial world, given the air sector's importance to jobs, skills and exports here. An integrated defense, security and foreign policy review is underway led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his advisors, who are said to be skeptical of local industry's ability to deliver major programs on time and on budget and would rather buy defense equipment off the shelf. With Covid-19 pretty much emptying government coffers, launching a multibillion-dollar program like Tempest is likely to be an issue unless the British can sign up some major international partners to share the cost. Last year Italy and Sweden both signed up to investigate partnering with the UK on a future combat air system, and those studies are ongoing with neither country yet committing to the program. Sweden may not have yet committed to a partnership with the British and others, but its biggest defense company, Saab, announced July 20 it was to invest an initial $63 million setting up a new future combat air center with other initiatives in the UK. Saab leads Sweden's future combat air system industrial participation in cooperation with the defense ministry. Details of where and when the company will invest in the UK are sparse, but Micael Johansson, the president and CEO of Saab, said the move demonstrated the company's commitment to combat air development and the UK. “Saab took the decision to create a new future combat air system center so that we can further develop the close working relationship with the other FCAS industrial partners and the UK MoD. This emphasizes the importance of both FCAS and the United Kingdom to Saab's future,” said Johansson. The British have cast their net beyond Europe in the search for partners, with India and Japan also having held discussions about a potential tie-up on a future combat air system. Across the English channel France and Germany are together developing a new combat jet to a similar time frame. Attempts to merge the two European programs have so far failed, but that's not to say that post Covid-19 financial reality may not cause a potential tie-up to be revisited. Howard Wheeldon, of consultants Wheeldon Strategic Advisory, said that the British government knew was at stake in the development of a future combat air system. “Team Tempest is a very significant program for the UK. ... A partnership between government, military, industry and international partners all of whom are determined to succeed,” he said. “Industry, along with the RAF Rapid Capabilities Office, have already achieved a vast amount in a very short period of time. I, for one, am in no doubt that the government fully understands the importance of what ‘Team Tempest' means to the UK, not only to jobs and maintaining necessary skills, but in the potential that the development has in terms of future prosperity,” said Wheeldon. https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2020/07/20/british-next-generation-fighter-program-taps-new-suppliers

by Gareth Jennings Lockheed Martin has been awarded USD15 billion to support all remaining C-130J Hercules work through to 16 July 2030. The indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract, which was announced by the US Department of Defense (DoD) on 17 July, covers domestic and Foreign Military Sales (FMS) work related to the four-engined airlifter built at the company's Marietta facility in Georgia. “This contract provides flexibility to accommodate the broad enterprise of activities associated with the C-130J programme,” the DoD said, noting that it specifically covers development, integration, retrofit, and production activities for all C-130J variants. The DoD added that fiscal year (FY) 2018 and 2019 aircraft procurement funds in the amount of USD3.3 million were being obligated at the time of award. This award follows a similar IDIQ agreement for USD10 billion signed with Lockheed Martin in August 2016. At that time, the DoD said the contract covered the production of an estimated 100 C-130Js for the United States and FMS customers. It would appear from the overlap in scope and timelines between the two awards that this latest contract is an extension and an expansion of the earlier one. https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/lockheed-martin-awarded-usd15-billion-for-future-c-130j-work

By: Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― Epirus, a venture-backed startup offering a counter-drone capability, launched quietly enough two years ago, but it's making noise by bringing together key veterans of Microsoft, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon ― and by landing its first deal with a name-brand defense prime contractor. Epirus chief executive Leigh Madden was general manager for Microsoft's national security business before he joined the Hawthorne, Calif.,-based firm two months ago, and its chief financial officer, Ken Bedingfield, is a former chief financial officer at Northrop. The former chairman of Epirus is Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of the Silicon Valley data-analytics company Palantir Technologies. Epirus, this week, is expected to announce a previously undisclosed strategic supplier agreement with Northrop to provide exclusive access to Epirus' software-defined electromagnetic pulse system, called Leonidas. The dollar value of the deal isn't being disclosed. Northrop said Leonidas would augment its own kinetic and non-kinetic solutions to counter small drones. The Army recently selected Northrop's Forward Area Air Defense Command and Control software, or FAAD-C2, as the interim C2 system to counter small drones. (DoD's FY21 budget request included $18.7 million for counter-drone enhancements for the system.) “UAS threats are proliferating across the modern battlespace,” said Kenn Todorov, vice president and general manager of Northrop Grumman's Combat Systems and Mission Readiness division. “By integrating the Epirus EMP weapon system into our C-UAS portfolio, we continue maturing our robust, integrated, layered approach to addressing and defeating these evolving threats.” Many companies have jumped into the $2 billion counter-UAS market, anticipating a boom as commercial drones have grown cheaper and more commonplace, posing an asymmetric threat on the battlefield as well as a threat to airports, sports stadiums, government buildings and urban areas. So many companies are in the field the Pentagon has been working to streamline the number of systems available across the department. Epirus executives said the company's technology is unique because its use of solid-state commercial semiconductor technology makes it lighter and smaller ― and because it can have narrow effects or be “adjusted to sanitize a volume of terrain or sky, creating a forcefield effect.” The company's systems involve a combination of high-power microwave technology and, for enhanced targeting, artificial intelligence. Epirus Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Bo Marr was a radio frequency engineer and technical lead on Raytheon's next-generation jammer program, under development by the U.S. Navy. Madden, a former U.S. Navy SEAL who spent eight years at Microsoft, and Bedingfield, who spent five years as Northrop's CFO, both said they joined Epirus because they were impressed by the technology and its potential. “Northrop and Microsoft are both multibillion-dollar defense businesses, and I think we bring a knowledge of how to operate around some of the larger opportunities and to make outsized impacts in the market,” Madden said. “We're taking that experience to a smaller, innovative company. I think that will allow us to really accelerate the pace of growth and have a more rapid and greater impact for our customers.” The Pentagon has attempted to shift toward working with smaller, more innovative companies to supplement its work with larger firms, which continue to dominate the marketplace. Flexible, non-traditional contact vehicles called “other transaction authorities” have grown more popular as the Pentagon has turned to Silicon Valley for cutting edge technologies. “One of the things that attracted me to come to Epirus is the ability to work in an agile enterprise that is trying to take some of the approaches of Silicon Valley and apply them to the defense world―to iterate quicker and to field faster, and to be able to respond to the urgent needs of the customer,” Bedingfield said. Bedingfield said the company is growing fast and generating revenue from working with customers on studies and technology demonstrations, but it's as yet unclear when it will begin to deliver products. The coronavirus pandemic has slowed its hiring, but the firm is looking to double in the next year, adding more than 50 employees in Hawthorne, and a planned office in Northern Virgina. Formed in 2018 and named after the magical bow of the Greek hero Theseus, Epirus was raising $17.8 million in new funding last November, according to its public filings. With Lonsdale and Marr, its co-founders include its previous CEO; current Vice Chairman John Tenet, from venture capitol firm 8VC; Chief Operating Officer Max Mednik, a Google veteran; UnitedHealthcare Chief Digital Officer Grant Verstandig is the current chairman. Palantir, which Lonsdale founded with billionaire Peter Thiel in 2005, appeared as an upstart when the Defense Department hadn't opened its arms as wide to Silicon Valley. Last year, Palantir beat Raytheon in a head-to-head competition to provide the Army a new version of its intelligence analysis system ― after a years long saga in which the Army rejected Palantir's offering and Palantir sued. In September, Epirus won a Small Business Innovation Research contract from the U.S. Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center as part of its AFWERX technology accelerator. The contract was for the company's novel architecture for using commercial off-the-shelf field programmable gate arrays, which are semiconductor devices commonly used in electronic circuits, as ultra-wideband radio frequency transceivers. While traditional systems use large vacuum tubes, Madden said Leonidas is based in microchips and software. “We believe there is no other solution on the market that allows for fully software defined precision targeting at digital speeds, enabling both precision targeting as well as large-area, counter-swarm targeting of many drones at the same time,” he said. Northrop and Epirus are expected to announce their partnership this week. “We're not just solving today's swarm threat, we're also looking to the future to understand how asymmetric threats will evolve,” Marr said in a statement. “Epirus is an agile startup, Northrop Grumman has defense prime contractor resources, and through this partnership we intend to deliver the best technology to the warfighter as fast as possible.” https://www.defensenews.com/2020/07/20/epirus-venture-backed-startup-inks-deal-with-northrop-for-counter-drone-tech

by Ashley Roque Industry is concerned about a potential US Army plan to bid on, judge, and select its own M2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle replacement, and is likening such a measure to a metaphorical self-licking ice cream cone. During the past few weeks, defence companies have been eagerly awaiting the release of a draft request for proposal (RFP) for the army's latest attempt to design and field an Optionally Manned Fighting Vehicle (OMFV). Although they were interested in learning more about what the army is seeking this time around, they were also keen to see if a provision was included that enabled the service's Ground Vehicle Systems Center (GVSC) to also compete as a prime contractor. As several sources suspected, the draft RFP publicly released on 17 July included such provision. “Potential offerors are notified that a US government entity may submit a proposal as a prime offeror,” the army wrote. Ashley John, the public affairs director for the army's Program Executive Office for Ground Combat Systems, confirmed to Janes on 19 July that the service is exploring options to “leverage its core competencies and compete with industry in the design of a future combat vehicle”. More specifically, she said that the service wanted to use its science and technology community and engineers to “potentially develop” a Bradley replacement vehicle. As a result, interested vendors now have a flurry of questions over the ethics and legality of such a measure. One industry source that closely collaborates with the service and GVSC told Janes https://www.janes.com/defence-news/news-detail/us-army-seeks-to-compete-as-omfv-prime-industry-unnerved