Nouvelles

By: Andrew C. Jarocki WASHINGTON ― The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps continue to invest in vertical takeoff aircraft, announcing a $4.2 billion contract with the Bell-Boeing Joint Program Office for dozens of new V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft. The agreement provides for the manufacture and delivery of 39 CMV-22B aircraft for the Navy and 14 MV-22B aircraft for the Marines. The delivery is expected to be completed by November 2024. The Navy will use the new tilt rotors for transporting personnel and cargo from shore to aircraft carriers. The Osprey is also used in infiltration/exfiltration operations. The V-22 and its variations have seen use by the U.S. Air Force for resupply operations, and by the Marines in Syria. The Army is also interested in developing vertical lift capabilities for deploying strike teams. The contract included a sale of four MV-22B aircraft for the government of Japan, where five American Ospreys arrived this spring to begin a deployment based in Tokyo. The purchase “enables the U.S. Navy to begin advancing its carrier onboard delivery fleet with modern tiltrotor aircraft” Kristin Houston, vice president for Boeing tilt-rotor programs and director of the Bell-Boeing V-22 program, said in a news release. The Air Force will also receive one new CV-22B from the contract. https://www.defensenews.com/industry/2018/07/03/us-navy-marine-corps-order-dozens-of-osprey-aircraft-in-42b-deal/

(B2 – En mer de Norvège) Alors qu'il naviguait entre l'Islande et la Norvège, nous avons pu embarquer quelques heures à bord du Nato Research Vessel (NRV) Alliance. Ce navire original, qui embarque des spécialistes de différents pays de l'Otan, teste des drones sous-marins dans les eaux glacés de l'Arctique. « Nous amenons la science à la mer », résume le docteur Catherine Warner, l'Américaine qui dirige le Centre de recherche et d'expérimentation maritime (CMRE) dont dépend le bateau. Bardé d'antennes, de sonars et de machines expérimentales, ce b'timent fait la fierté de l'Otan. Les officiels en visite à bord y voient une preuve de la capacité des Alliés à développer de nouvelles solutions pour répondre aux besoins des militaires. Les drones sous-marins ou gliders Si le NRV Alliance est susceptible de travailler sur tous les domaines identifiés comme prioritaires par les marines de l'Otan (lutte anti-sous-marines, lutte-anti-mines, renseignement...), ses travaux sont actuellement concentrés sur les drones sous-marins, appelés gliders en anglais. Des engins qui pourraient révolutionner de nombreuses missions. NB : Le NRV Alliance et ses drones participent régulièrement à des manoeuvres de l'Otan, comme l'exercice de renseignement interalliés Unified Vision 2018. Lire ici. Plus endurants que les hommes ? Ces drones séduisent au sein de l'Otan. C'est un haut gradé, riche d'une expérience dans le renseignement militaire maritime, qui en résume tout l'attrait : « Un équipage humain a besoin de retourner au port pour dormir, manger et voir sa famille. Ces robots peuvent rester des mois en mer. » Peu coûteux, discrets, polyvalents, endurants et autonomes, ces engins sont au cœur des expérimentations menées par les 25 scientifiques à bord. Ceux qu'ils utilisent actuellement, des Slocum G3 de l'Américain Teledyne, cartographient les fonds marins et font des relevés de températures et de courants. Des informations cruciales pour repérer et surveiller les mouvements de sous-marins, par exemple. Multiusages Le potentiel des gliders intéresse dans des domaines divers. Ces engins ont été testés dans la lutte anti-mines, avec des robots capables de patrouiller, de reconnaître des menaces et de les signaler à l'homme qui pourra ensuite intervenir. Un moyen intéressant de palier à une flotte européenne de navires de lutte anti-mines de plus en plus vieillissante et coûteuse à remplacer. Dans un autre registre, des drones pourraient mailler les fonds de certains points stratégiques pour surveiller les mouvements de sous-marins adverses. D'ici quelques années, si des puissances étaient capables de bloquer ainsi certains axes clefs, la dissuasion nucléaire pourrait se voir impactée et devrait se réinventer dans sa composante navale. C'est l'un des intérêts du grand Nord, où transitent régulièrement des sous-marins nucléaires. De l'aveu d'un haut gradé de l'Otan, spécialiste en matière de renseignement, ces drones sous-marins sont à l'heure actuelle presque indétectables. Les sous-marins remis en cause L'arrivée de ces submersibles risque de remettre en question tout le fonctionnement sous-marin. D'autant plus qu'ils sont très majoritairement automatisés : vu la difficulté pour assurer les communications sous l'eau, il n'est pas possible de les piloter en permanence. L'homme se contente donc en réalité de suivre les mouvements sur des écrans, ne donnant que quelques ajustements pour les remontées régulières en surface. Une évolution stratégique qui rappelle au docteur Catherine Warner un autre grand changement au sein de l'US Air Force, où elle s'occupait de plusieurs programmes de drones : « Les sous-mariniers sont pour l'instant sceptiques. Comme pour les pilotes de l'US Air Force lorsque les Predator sont arrivés à l'époque. Mais aujourd'hui, ils ont pleinement intégré l'intérêt de ces drones et ils ont accepté de travailler dessus. » Un navire presque unique Conçu sur mesure Le NVR Alliance est un navire conçu sur mesure pour les besoins de l'Otan, dans les ateliers de l'Italien Fincantieri. Livré en 1988, il embarque une multitude d'équipements de recherche qui en font un laboratoire en pointe dans le domaine des études maritimes. Il dispose des dernières technologies dans les domaines océanographique, acoustique, météorologique ainsi que de son propre atelier pour réparer ou modifier le matériel. « La force de ce navire, explique un scientifique à bord, c'est qu'il permet d'aller tester des idées dehors, en conditions réelles. » Le b'timent peut de fait aller naviguer dans les eaux polaires. Le tout avec des conditions de vie à bord qui restent très confortables : la quasi-totalité des chercheurs dispose de cabines individuelles ! L'Alliance au sein de l'Otan Le NRV Alliance est, avec le CRB Leonardo, l'un des deux navires détenus en propre par l'Otan. Rattaché au Centre de recherche et d'expérimentation maritime (CMRE) de La Spezia (Italie), il est chargé de tester des technologies au profit des Alliés. Le b'timent a longtemps été opéré par des marins allemands, jusqu'en 2015. Pour simplifier la logistique dans son port d'attache, il a été transféré aux mains de la marine italienne qui a rapidement séduit les scientifiques à bord avec sa botte secrète : la pizza en guise de casse-croûte nocturne ! Des pionniers pas toujours suivis Les équipes du NVR Alliance travaillent en collaboration avec des industriels et des universités. Ils développent souvent leurs propres solutions aux problématiques identifiées. Ils ont par exemple acheté un drone Bluefin au Français Thales, dans lequel ils ont intégré leurs propres équipements. Le fabricant a pu bénéficier des retours et progresse ainsi dans son développement, gr'ce aux essais de l'Otan. Côté autorité publique, l'enthousiasme n'est pas toujours aussi présent. De l'aveu du docteur Catherine Warner, les découvertes à bord ne sont pas toujours suivies par les États commanditaires qui hésitent à poursuivre les investissements. https://www.bruxelles2.eu/2018/07/03/lalliance-navire-de-recherche-de-lotan-teste-des-drones-sous-marins-dans-le-grand-nord/

By: Megan Eckstein A $50,000 investment in laser scanning equipment saved the Navy nearly $2 million during the planning effort for USS George Washington‘s (CVN-73) refueling and complex overhaul. A small team of engineers with a LIDAR system did the work of the usual 20-person team, inspecting the nooks and crannies of the carrier to inform the overhaul plans. Now the Navy is looking to leverage that win and expand its use of laser scanners to not only cut down costs for aircraft carrier maintenance planning and execution but also tie into virtual reality trainers and other cutting-edge technologies. In the case of the George Washington RCOH, a team of two or three engineers from Newport News Shipbuilding flew out to the forward-deployed carrier in Japan with a LIDAR scanner atop a tripod. As the tool slowly spins around it gathers millions of data points depicting how far away objects are from the scanner. The resulting 3D point cloud shows the precise location of items in the room – not where a server rack was supposed to be according to the blueprints, for example, but where it actually is. Capt. John Markowicz, the in-service carrier program manager, told USNI News in an interview that the $1.8-million savings from that one ship check effort was about 15 percent of the total cost of that portion of the RCOH planning, and that his office was already employing the laser scanning technology ahead of the next RCOH for USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74). He said it was too early to guess a percent savings the laser scanning will yield this time around, but that it would likely be on par or better than with George Washingtonbecause Newport News Shipbuilding has continued to invest in the laser scanners and learning how to best leverage them. Markowicz said the tripod-mounted scanners cost about $3,600 each, and smaller handheld ones for scanning small spaces cost about $600. The actual scanning service can cost between $50 and $250 an hour, and post-production work can cost $100 to $300 and hour. USNI News visited Newport News Shipbuilding last October, and during a lunchtime meeting a company engineer scanned the whole conference room and produced a point cloud model of the room within about 30 minutes, as an example of how quickly the scanners can work. Once those point cloud models are created, the Navy and Newport News have already found several uses during the RCOH and other carrier maintenance planning and execution phases. First, for the actual planning, the point cloud models can offer some spatial perspective that flat blueprints can't, as well as an updated “as-is” assessment of the space instead of the “as-designed” view the blueprints contain. Mark Bilinski, a scientist at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific and its Battlespace Exploitation of Mixed Reality (BEMR) Lab, and his team are working on laser scanning technology and ways to leverage the 3D point cloud product. He showed off some of the technologies to USNI News during the U.S. Naval Institute and AFCEA's WEST 2018 conference in San Diego in February. During a panel presentation at WEST, he said that sometimes the 3D scans just show discrepancies between where an item was supposed to be installed versus where it actually was installed. However, he ran into a case where the blueprints depicted an escape hatch of a certain size, but it was larger in reality; in that case, a planner might have thought there was room to install something nearby, when in reality putting the equipment there would actually partially block the hatch and cause a safety issue. In another case, the blueprints showed a hatch as being much larger than it actually is, and so the planner might have thought the space was unusable. “That's an opportunity cost because that might be some space that you could use for an install that you don't think is available to you,” Bilinski said. Once the planning is done and execution is set to begin, Markowicz said the 3D models, unlike 2D blueprints, can help identify interferences and obstructions, help find the best route down narrow passageways for bringing in bulky equipment to install, aid in laying in pipes and wires and more. “That is valuable, it cuts down time in the shipyard,” which ultimately cuts down cost and allows the next carrier to come in for maintenance quicker. Norfolk Naval Shipyard and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility are beginning to embrace this technology, which could spread to the other two public shipyards to support submarine maintenance activities too, and Newport News Shipbuilding is “all in” on the private sector side, he said. Markowicz noted that taking the scans and making mockups in a 3D digital environment can not only save time on major efforts like finding the best routing for piping, but can also help with little things – for instance, there was a case of trying to install a laptop in a phone booth area, but it turned out that the laptop couldn't open all the way without hitting the phone. “We stumble upon these things sometimes a little late in the design process, or actually the install process. It's not as efficient as it can be,” he said. Every time a maintenance or modernization activity takes place, the scan would become slightly outdated, but Markowicz said the idea would be to rescan periodically and maintain records of all the scans as “selected records” that accompany the 2D drawings for the Nimitz class today. “Once we have this digitally, I think that's pretty useful. We can share it with multiple activities and have the documentation for future use and future availability planning,” he said. Bilinski also noted the ways laser scans could help during a major maintenance period, when multiple program offices are trying to get their own equipment in and don't always have a great way to coordinate. In many availabilities, Bilinski said, someone goes to install a piece of equipment in a space, only to find that that space is taken. Instead, he will just take the next closest space that meets his need. Then the next person comes in to use that space and finds that it was just taken, causing a cascading effect. If everyone involved in the maintenance period were working off a shared digital plan that could be updated in real time as systems were installed, conflicts could be identified sooner and plans could be rearranged as needed without any on-ship confusion. “If you have that collaborative environment where everyone is planning off of the scan data, the installer can see not only that this space is physically available, but hey, it's also available in the planning environment; no one is planning to put anything there. Or, maybe someone is planning to put something there but you've got to put your equipment somewhere, so you put it there, but you at least know who to notify so that we can start fixing this problem earlier than discovering it when the next program office shows up to install their equipment,” he said. Virtual reality application Virtual and augmented reality tools are already changing how ships are built, with Newport News Shipbuilding telling USNI News during the October visit that the use of VR goggles while laying pipes and cables for the future John F. Kennedy (CVN-79) has cut the required man-hours in half. Newport News is also sending its shipbuilders out with tablets that can use VR to show what's on the other side of a wall or where to cut a hole into a wall, and can also include how-to videos to show step-by-step how to do the day's tasks. Markowicz said there would likely be less applicability for that technology on the ship repair and maintenance side compared to the ship construction side, but he hopes to explore how the public shipyards can use VR and tablets to drive efficiency up and cost down. Where VR and laser scanning could converge, though, is on training. Because each ship has a different set of navigation and steering systems, surface search radars and other systems, allowing a sailor to train on his or her own ship is more useful than training on a generic ship. Markowicz said his office is working with Bilinski's BEMR Lab to create ship-specific VR training tools for while ships are in maintenance. They scanned destroyer USS John S. McCain (DDG-56) after its collision last year, and while the ship undergoes a lengthy repair process, sailors could use VR goggles to practice maintenance and repair work on McCain's specific configuration without having to actually be on the destroyer. The BEMR lab already has Virtual Eqiupment Environment (V2E) tools that let the user walk into a room, spot a server rack, for example, and begin to take apart and put back together the server rack. Similarly, when a carrier is in RCOH for four years, sailors are often times flown around the world to get training time on other carriers. Though the ship is safe for them to be in while in RCOH, the systems are all ripped out. If the Navy had scans of the last carrier that came out of RCOH and could insert a finished product view into VR goggles, sailors could train on their own ship at Newport News while the RCOH goes on around them. “We've got to find creative ways to do training. Normally they leave ... and they go out to the fleet and ride another ship and get their training that way. But a lieutenant had the idea of, okay, you can go up to pri-fly (primary flight control), any everything's ripped apart but you can put on these goggles and see what your space is going to look like 48 months from now ... and visualize it all and stand there in your space without having to go to another ship,” Markowicz said. “I definitely see a partnership with the BEMR Lab and laying that out for training for ship's force, closing that gap in readiness. Because I was part of the Carl Vinson (CVN-70) overhaul, and our skills atrophied as we stayed in overhaul for that length of time. So we have to find opportunities to sharpen our skills.” Bilinski said there could be other uses for combining a current ship scan and VR goggles or tablets. For example, if scans of ship spaces were taken correctly, they could be woven together to create essentially a Google Maps of sorts. New sailors could use it to learn their way around the ship. Or, more importantly, “let's say a fire breaks out on a ship and you need to go into a compartment and fight that fire – it's going to be smoke-filled, it can be dark, you may not have ever been in that space, there could be plenty of places where you can fall, you could twist your ankle, you could bump into equipment in the space. If you were to understand where you were, you could look through that wall and see what the last as-is condition of the ship was and sort of get an idea of what you're getting into before you go into that space,” then firefighting or other emergency response efforts could be done potentially more safely and quickly. Policy and technical barriers Much like other emerging technologies, Markowicz said those trying to implement laser scanning are facing the usual set of challenges: how does the Navy balance the need to ensure technical rigor while also not being too proscriptive and excluding potential scanners or data formats that could be useful? What legal and ethical concerns need to be addressed through policy changes? “That's the rub right now,” Markowicz said. “You see us working with Newport News. I'm sure there's other pockets within NAVSEA that are working on it. But alignment across the whole NAVSEA equities hasn't happened yet. So where we are successful at NAVSEA (Naval Sea Systems Command) is where we have a singular tech warrant holder who owns turbines or fire protection or what have you. So we're really successful in employing that model across NAVSEA. I see a vision someday where you have a tech warrant holder for a laser scanner that's able to establish standards, policy, requirements to go forward and articulate that to industry.” His team is hosting a laser scanning summit later this month to identify barriers and develop courses of action to begin to address them – everything from how many dots per inch are needed for the scan to be useful, to, are there any engineering decisions that cannot or should not be made based on laser scanning and 3D point cloud modeling work. Markowicz suggested that anything related to the nuclear propulsion system is going to require much more technical rigor than other parts of the ship, but he said he still sees great potential for savings with laser scanners beyond what the Navy and Newport News Shipbuilding are doing today. “I think across the board we will save money, and in that way the leadership is behind it if it helps us be more efficient,” he said. Back when the Navy and Newport News first did the George Washington ship check, then-Navy acquisition chief Sean Stackley's message to Markowicz was, “I absolutely needed to make it my mission to leverage new technologies and be more efficient in the repair business,” the captain said, and he believes this is a prime example of how to do that. To be successful enterprise-wide, he said, “I think the real key is setting the standards, which will provide a framework where contractors and Navy can plug into. To get there, we need to provide technical leadership, host conferences ... flush out all the issues. At least create a standard so that we can contract and have deliverables. One software package or one laser scanner, I don't think we need to be that proscriptive. I think we set a standard for industry, like an ISO standard, and people will come around to it.” He likened the point cloud image to a PDF that could be opened on a Mac or a PC and is readily sharable among users, and said it would be important that, regardless of what scanner is used, the output has these qualities too. He suggested that some scans would need to be precise while others could forsake precision for speed if the user just needed a general idea of how a room is laid out, and all those types of issues would eventually become written out and standardized. https://news.usni.org/2018/07/02/navy-use-of-laser-scanning-already-showing-big-savings-summit-this-month-to-refine-plans

By: Maddy Longwell A research and development collaboration management company has been awarded a contract to helm a technology prototype consortium as part of a new acquisition process employed by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic, in Charleston, South Carolina. SPAWAR awarded an other transaction authority to Advanced Technology International, of Summerville, South Carolina, for consortium management for SPAWAR's Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP). Under the contract, Advanced Technology International will manage a group of defense contractors who will complete projects for the government that address SPAWAR technology needs, and the consortium will facilitate competition for projects. Topics will be open to competition beginning in August 2018, the SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic said. The contract is worth $100 million over three years. IWRP OTA is an acquisition tool that allows nontraditional industry partners to work with organizations across SPAWAR to prototype technology that supports naval information warfare capabilities. IWRP focuses on information technology areas such as cyberwarfare, cloud computing and data science. SPAWAR announced OTAs as an acquisition tool through the IWRP at an industry day in February 2018, where prospective offerors learned about OTA strategy and the technical scope of IWRP OTA projects. “The IWRP will allow us to take advantage of commercially developed capabilities that are keeping pace with emerging technologies; technologies and innovation that we cannot take advantage of in a [Federal Acquisition Regulation]-based contract environment,” said Chris Miller, executive director of SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic. OTAs, which are not covered by the FAR, are a more flexible acquisition tool used by the Department of Defense. OTAs provide for the production of prototype systems. OTA contracts are mostly awarded to nontraditional defense contractors. OTA contracts enable departments under the Department of Defense to access commercial technologies that support the overall goal of IWRP, said SSC Atlantic Deputy Executive Director Bill Deligne, in a news release. “This mechanism is faster and more attuned to getting something quickly that we want today, as opposed to traditional federal acquisition,” Deligne said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/home/2018/07/02/the-navys-new-acquisition-tool-speeds-up-tech-prototyping/

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis WASHINGTON — President Trump has written sharply worded letters to the leaders of several NATO allies — including Germany, Belgium, Norway and Canada — taking them to task for spending too little on their own defense and warning that the United States is losing patience with what he said was their failure to meet security obligations shared by the alliance. The letters, sent in June, are the latest sign of acrimony between Mr. Trump and American allies as he heads to a NATO summit meeting next week in Brussels that will be a closely watched test of the president's commitment to the alliance. Mr. Trump has repeatedly questioned its value and has claimed that its members are taking advantage of the United States. Mr. Trump's criticism raised the prospect of another confrontation involving the president and American allies after a blowup by Mr. Trump at the Group of 7 gathering last month in Quebec, and increased concerns that far from projecting solidarity in the face of threats from Russia, the meeting will highlight divisions within the alliance. Such a result could play into the hands of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who is to meet with Mr. Trump in Helsinki, Finland, after the NATO meeting, and whose primary goal is sowing divisions within the alliance. In his letters, the president hinted that after more than a year of public and private complaints that allies have not done enough to share the burden of collective defense, he may be considering a response, including adjusting the United States' military presence around the world. “As we discussed during your visit in April, there is growing frustration in the United States that some allies have not stepped up as promised,” Mr. Trump wrote to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in a particularly pointed letter, according to someone who saw it and shared excerpts with The New York Times. “The United States continues to devote more resources to the defense of Europe when the Continent's economy, including Germany's, are doing well and security challenges abound. This is no longer sustainable for us.” “Growing frustration,” Mr. Trump wrote, “is not confined to our executive branch. The United States Congress is concerned, as well.” The president's complaint is that many NATO allies are not living up to the commitment they made at their Wales summit meeting in 2014 to spend 2 percent of their gross domestic product on national defense. American presidents have long complained about the lack of burden-sharing by NATO member countries, but Mr. Trump has taken that criticism much further, claiming that some of the United States' closest allies are essentially deadbeats who have failed to pay debts to the organization, a fundamental misunderstanding of how it functions. The Trump administration has already reportedly been analyzing a large-scale withdrawal of American forces from Germany, after Mr. Trump expressed surprise that 35,000 active-duty troops are stationed there and complained that NATO countries were not contributing enough to the alliance. In the letter, Mr. Trump told Ms. Merkel that Germany also deserves blame for the failure of other NATO countries to spend enough: “Continued German underspending on defense undermines the security of the alliance and provides validation for other allies that also do not plan to meet their military spending commitments, because others see you as a role model.” In language that is echoed in his letters to the leaders of other countries — including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, Prime Minister Erna Solberg of Norway and Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium — Mr. Trump said he understands the “domestic political pressure” brought to bear by opponents of boosting military expenditures, noting that he has expended “considerable political capital to increase our own military spending.” “It will, however, become increasingly difficult to justify to American citizens why some countries do not share NATO's collective security burden while American soldiers continue to sacrifice their lives overseas or come home gravely wounded,” Mr. Trump wrote to Ms. Merkel. Mr. Michel reacted tartly last week to the letter, telling reporters at a European Union summit meeting in Brussels that he was “not very impressed” by it, according to a report by Deutsche Welle. Mr. Trump has long complained about the alliance and routinely grouses that the United States is treated shabbily by multilateral organizations of which it is a member, be it the World Trade Organization or the North Atlantic alliance. But in Europe, the letters to NATO allies have been greeted with some degree of alarm because of their suggestion that Mr. Trump is prepared to impose consequences on the allies — as he has done in an escalating tariff fight with European trading partners — if they do not do what he is asking. “Trump still seems to think that NATO is like a club that you owe dues to, or some sort of protection racket where the U.S. is doing all the work protecting all these deadbeat Europeans while they're sitting around on vacation, and now he is suggesting there are consequences,” said Derek Chollet, a former Defense Department official who is the executive vice president for security and defense policy at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “Europeans have been watching Donald Trump begin to implement his rhetoric on trade in ways that are very combative,” he said, “and they're starting to contemplate whether he would do this regarding security issues, as well.” Mr. Trump's letter to Mr. Trudeau was reported last month by iPolitics in Canada, and the existence of others was reported last week by Foreign Policy. It was not clear precisely how many Mr. Trump wrote, and the White House would not comment on presidential correspondence. But two diplomatic sources said they believed at least a dozen were sent, including to Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain. A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to discuss the matter, said that Mr. Trump is committed to the NATO alliance and expects allies to shoulder “their fair share of our common defense burden, and to do more in areas that most affect them.” John R. Bolton, Mr. Trump's national security adviser, said Sunday that it was NATO members who refused to spend more on defense — not the president — who were responsible for undercutting the alliance. “The president wants a strong NATO,” Mr. Bolton said in an interview on CBS's “Face the Nation.” “If you think Russia's a threat, ask yourself this question: Why is Germany spending less than 1.2 percent of its G.N.P.? When people talk about undermining the NATO alliance, you should look at those who are carrying out steps that make NATO less effective militarily.” But for diplomats hoping fervently to avoid another high-profile summit meeting collapse with Mr. Trump as the instigator, the letters were concerning. “Europeans, like many folks in our Defense Department, think that there are many good things that could come out of this summit if only they can keep it from going off the rails,” Mr. Chollet said. “They are hoping to survive without irreparable damage, and so the fact that you have all these storm clouds surrounding NATO and Trump is really worrisome.” Mr. Trump's disparagement of Europe and the alliance has become almost routine, leaving some veteran diplomats aghast. Last week, Jim Melville, the United States ambassador to Estonia, told friends and colleagues that he would resign at the end of this month after more than 30 years in the Foreign Service, in part because of the president's language. “For the President to say the E.U. was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,' or that ‘NATO is as bad as NAFTA' is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it's time to go,” Mr. Melville wrote in a Facebook post. He was referring to remarks about Europe that the president made during a rally last week in Fargo, N.D., and comments about NATO that he is reported to have made privately during the Group of 7 gathering. Still, the president is not alone in demanding more robust military spending by NATO allies. Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, wrote to Gavin Williamson, the British defense minister, last month saying he was “concerned” that the United Kingdom's military strength was “at risk of erosion” if it did not increase spending, and warned that France could eclipse Britain as the United States' “partner of choice” if it did not invest more. A United States official confirmed the contents of Mr. Mattis's letter, first reported by The Sun. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/world/europe/trump-nato.html

Kevin Dougherty Shipbuilding firm will start work on icebreaker conversion this summer Chantier Davie Canada Inc., the country's largest shipbuilding firm, is gunning for contracts to build new icebreakers for the Canadian Coast Guard. "Given the age of the Canadian Coast Guard fleet, the entire icebreaker fleet will need to be replaced in the near future," says Alex Vicefield, CEO of Inocea Group, which has owned Davie since 2012. "We have every intention of submitting a world-class proposal together with global leaders in icebreaker design." Until then, Davie, located across the river from Quebec City in Lévis, is in the home stretch of negotiations with the federal government to convert three surplus commercial icebreakers for the Canadian Coast Guard. Under its new management, Davie has made its mark in the industry by turning surplus ships into lower-cost solutions. The first converted icebreaker will be ready in time for the 2018-2019 ice season on the St. Lawrence and Great Lakes. However, when it comes to building new ships, there remain doubts about Davie's ability to deliver at a competitive cost. Canadian ships cost 'twice as much' Marc Gagnon is director, government affairs and regulatory compliance for the Montreal-based Fednav, which operates a fleet of nearly 100 ships. Fednav buys its ships in Japan because, Gagnon says, Canadian-built ships cost "at least twice as much." "Davie no longer has the capacity to build an icebreaker or a frigate," Gagnon said. "To do so, they would have to re-equip their shipyard." Vicefield said Davie is aware of the challenges ahead and has invested $60 million to upgrade its steel-cutting and IT infrastructure. The University of British Columbia's Michael Byers, who argues that Ottawa's current shipbuilding strategy is too costly and needlessly slow, says building government ships in Canada makes sense and Davie is definitely up to the task. "For every $100 million that is spent on building a ship in Canada, you would get several times more than that in terms of knock-on economic activity," Byers said. "And Davie is the logical place to do it. They have a very large shipyard. They have a very capable workforce. The labour costs are relatively low and it's an active shipyard." Asterix 'very impressive' Last year, before Ottawa agreed to sit down with Davie to discuss the icebreaker conversions, Davie delivered the Asterix — a container ship converted into a supply ship for the Royal Canadian Navy — on time and on budget. ​In 2015, when the navy's existing two supply ships were no longer seaworthy, Vicefield and his team proposed converting the Asterix to a naval supply ship for about $600 million. "What they did with the Asterix was very impressive," Byers said. "There is no other shipyard in Canada that could have done that." In comparison, Vancouver-based ​Seaspan was chosen to build two new navy supply ships for $2.6 billion. But the first new supply ship will only be ready in 2020. "This is a cutthroat business and there is a lot of money involved and a lot of politics involved," Byers said. "Davie has the capacity and the experience to build icebreakers, plus they have the lowest costs in terms of labour of any shipyard in the country," he said. The Canadian Coast Guard has an aging fleet of 13 ice-breaking vessels and two hovercraft. Ice still a hazard to navigation Canada's oldest and largest icebreaker, the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, was commissioned in 1969. It was to be replaced in 2017 by the CCGS John G. Diefenbaker. But from the initial estimate of $720 million, the Diefenbaker is now expected to cost over $1.4 billion, with delivery in 2022. To meet Ottawa's need for "interim icebreakers," Davie found four icebreakers built for oil and gas drilling off the coast of Alaska that were idled when oil prices fell, putting an end of Shell's Arctic venture. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to negotiations with Davie to acquire the three smaller ice-breaking vessels, leaving aside the larger Aiviq. With no other shipyard matching Davie's proposal, the conversion work will begin this summer. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/davie-coast-guard-icebreakers-canada-vicefield-byers-gagnon-1.4730332

By: Nigel Pittaway MELBOURNE, Australia ― Australia will acquire nine high-end anti-submarine warfare frigates from the end of the next decade under a deal with BAE Systems worth AU$35 billion (U.S. $26 billion). The announcement was formally made Friday at the ASC shipyard in Osborne, South Australia, by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Minister for Defence Marise Payne and Minister for Defence Industry Christopher Pyne. A version of BAE Systems' City-class Type 26 ASW frigate, now under construction for the British Royal Navy, will be acquired under Australia's SEA 5000 Phase 1 project, also known as the Future Frigate Project. Referred to as the Global Combat Ship―Australia, or GCS-A, during the competition, the design will be known as the Hunter-class in Royal Australian Navy service and will replace the Navy's existing Anzac-class frigates. There has been speculation in the media that the decision to go with BAE may be driven, in part, by Australia's desire to secure strong terms with the U.K. as it negotiates a series of new trade agreements after Britain leaves the European Union. Payne noted Friday that the GCS-A design was selected because it was the most capable ASW platform. “This is a decision entirely based on capability, the best capability to equip the Navy in anti-submarine warfare,” she said. Regardless, news of BAE's win was welcomed in the United Kingdom, with Secretary of State for Defence Gavin Williamson referring to it as the “biggest maritime defence deal of the decade.” “This £20 billion ‘deal of the decade' demonstrates how British defence plays a huge role in creating jobs and prosperity and is ‘Global Britain' in action,” he commented on social media. “Great to see our military and industrial links strengthen with Australia.” The ships will be built by ASC Shipbuilding in South Australia, using local workers and Australian steel, under the Turnbull government's continuous naval shipbuilding program. “What we are doing here is announcing our commitment to build the nine Future Frigates,” Prime Minister Turnbull said. “The Hunter-class frigates will be the most advanced anti-submarine warships in the world.” The Hunter-class frigates will be equipped with CEA Technologies-built CEAFAR phased array radar currently fitted to the Navy's post-anti-ship missile defense Anzac frigates, together with Lockheed Martin's Aegis combat system and an interface provided by Saab Australia. The Aegis combat system was mandated for all of Australia's major surface combatants by the Turnbull government in October 2017. The GCS-A design was selected in preference to Fincantieri's Australian FREMM, dubbed FREMM-A, a variant of the ASW-optimized FREMM frigate now in service with the Italian Navy; and the F-5000 from Navantia, based on an evolution of the Royal Australian Navy's Hobart-class air warfare destroyer, which in turn is a derivative of the Spanish Navy's F-100 Álvaro de Bazán class. An ASW capability was the highest priority for the Royal Australian Navy, according to Chief of Navy Vice Adm. Tim Barrett. “I spoke as recently as last night to the First Sea Lord, my equivalent in the [British] Royal Navy, and I am assured by his comments on just how successful this platform will be as the world's most advanced anti-submarine warfare frigate,” he said Friday. The first steel is due to be cut on prototyping activities for the build at Osborne in late 2020, with full production following in 2022. The first ship of the class will be delivered to the Royal Australian Navy in the late 2020s. Under the deal, the government-owned shipbuilder ASC will become a subsidiary of BAE Systems during the build, with the government retaining a sovereign share in the entity. The shipyard will revert to government ownership at the end of the project. Turnbull said the arrangement ensures BAE Systems is fully responsible and accountable for the delivery of the frigates, noting that Australia retains the intellectual property and a highly skilled workforce at the end of the program. “My expectation is that the next generation of frigates that comes after the ones we're about to start building at ASC will be designed and built in Australia,” he said. BAE System's global maritime systems business development director, Nigel Stewart, told Defense News that he welcomes the build strategy. “We were really pleased with that as an outcome because ASC has great capability. We always wanted to use the workforce, but this allows us to join ASC and BAE together much earlier, and we think that will be really positive,” he said. Stewart said the plan was for the Hunter-class build to follow the Type 26 activity in the U.K. by around five years, which will serve to de-risk the Australian program. BAE is due to deliver the first ship, HMS Glasgow, to the British Royal Navy in 2025, with entry into service in the 2027 time frame. “We cut steel for the first Type 26 in the U.K. in June 2017, and we'll cut steel for full production of the Hunter class in South Australia in 2022,” he said. “We'll run at an 18-month drumbeat in the U.K., and somewhere between 18 months and two years in Australia. That will keep a five-year gap, which is almost perfect. You are de-risking the Australian program in the U.K. and you don't get the obsolescence issues you would if there was a longer gap, so it's a really good program overlap.” In other news Friday, the Turnbull government announced it will set up a AU$670 million training and capability center for the Hunter-class frigates in Western Australia. Known as Ship Zero, the initiative will be established at HMAS Stirling, the Navy's Fleet Base West, at the shipbuilding facility in Henderson. Much of the training traditionally performed at sea will be transferred into the land-based facility. The capital works project will be considered by the Australian Parliament early next year, and construction is expected to commence in 2019. https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/06/29/australia-officially-announces-26b-frigate-contract-here-are-the-build-details/

By: David B. Larter and Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON ― In a move that could send shock waves through the global frigate market, Australia appears poised to announce that it has selected BAE Systems' Type 26 design for its new future frigate design. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that on June 29, the Australian military will make the formal announcement that BAE has won the AU$35 billion (U.S. $26 billion) contest to build nine frigates, which are being designed with anti-submarine warfare in mind. Under the competition guidelines, construction on the ship is scheduled to begin at the shipyards at Osborne in 2020. The design beat out two strong challenges from ships that, unlike the Type 26, already exist. The move is a major blow to Fincantieri, which had been pushing its anti-submarine warfare FREMM for the requirement. The Spanish shipbuilder Navantia, which already has a major operation in Australia, was also a strong competitor for the contract with its F-100 frigate design. In 2007, Navantia was selected to build the Australian air warfare destroyer. The competition also has implications for the Canadian frigate program, which is expected to announce a winner later this year, said Byron Callan, an defense analyst with Capital Alpha Partners. “The win is a positive for BAE because it's the first international order for the Type 26 and it may help position that ship type for Canada's Surface Combatant program that should be decided in late 2018,” Callan said. Canada has a 15-ship requirement. The unit price for the hull is about $850 million to $1 billion, which does not include some government-furnished systems. The U.K. has already agreed to buy eight of the Type 26 designs, with the goal of fielding them in the mid-2020s. BAE started building the first of three Type 26s it has under contract last year. The first warship is currently scheduled to enter service with the British Royal Navy in 2027 to start replacing the Type 23 fleet. Rolls-Royce with its MT30 gas turbine engine and MBDA with the Sea Ceptor anti-air missile are among the Type 26 subcontractors who could be significant beneficiaries from the Australian order. There has been speculation in the media that the decision to go with BAE may be driven, in part, by Australia's desire to secure strong terms with the U.K. as it negotiates a series of new trade agreements after Britain leaves the European Union. The announcement came just hours after the U.S. State Department announced it had clearedthe sale of $185 million in parts to help Australia connect its CEAFAR 2 phased array radar system with Lockheed Martin's Aegis combat system, with the goal of having both pieces of equipment aboard the future frigates. Andrew Chuter from London contributed to this report. https://www.defensenews.com/global/asia-pacific/2018/06/28/report-australia-selects-bae-for-frigate-design/

By: Aaron Mehta WASHINGTON – The U.S. State Department has cleared Spain to purchase five Aegis weapon systems, potentially worth $860.4 million. The systems would be placed aboard Spanish frigates, which are interoperable with NATO allies such as the U.S. Spain currently operates five existing Aegis-equipped frigates. Adding the systems to Spain's fleet will “afford more flexibility and capability to counter regional threats and continue to enhance stability in the region,” according to an announcement posted by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. In addition to the five systems, the package includes six shipsets Digital Signal Processing, five shipsets AWS Computing Infrastructure MARK 1 MOD 0, five shipsets Operational Readiness Test Systems (ORTS), five shipsets MK 99 MOD 14 Fire Control System, five shipsets MK 41 Baseline VII Vertical Launching Systems (VLS), two All-Up-Round MK 54 Mod 0 lightweight torpedoes, twenty SM-2 Block IIIB missiles and MK 13 canisters with AN/DKT-71 warhead compatible telemeter, as well as other equipment. Being cleared by the State Department does not guarantee a sale will be completed. Congress can still intervene, and final price and quantity are often altered during negotiations. The proposed sale is being handled under a Foreign Military Sales vehicle. Should the sale clear, it primary work would be done by Lockheed Martin in Moorestown, NJ, and Manassas, VA; Raytheon in Waltham, MA; and General Dynamics in Williston, VT. There are also a “significant number of companies under contract with the U.S. Navy that will provide components and systems as well as engineering services” to support the sale, the DSCA notes. https://www.defensenews.com/smr/nato-priorities/2018/06/26/spain-cleared-to-buy-five-aegis-systems