Military modernization is commonly associated with replacing an existing platform or weapon system. While the new items inevitably have higher unit procurement prices than those they replace, the costs associated with modernization are justified in terms of improved combat effectiveness and operating efficiency.
This is part 2 of a 6-part series covering the Army’s modernization priorities leading up to the Association of the United States Army’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., Oct. 8-10. Today’s focus: Air-and-Missile Defense. After nearly two decades of fighting insurgents on the ground, the Army is turning its attention to threats from the air and beefing up its ability to fend off attacks.
Companies in aerospace and defense (A&D) supply chains have many problems, which seem to grow with the rising proportion of information in their supply chains; this data growth is in part due to surging inflows of data from the Internet of Things (IoT) and lifecycle-based precise replicas of products and processes known as digital twins and digital threads. While physical parts are the reason supply chains exist, there has been an explosion in the amount of highly detailed, proprietary data—materials, requirements processes, inspections, verifications, certifications, and more—that accompanies components from producer to prime contractor and manufacturer to airfield and depot.
WASHINGTON — Leonardo DRS has received an additional $13 million to continue engineering and testing a vehicle-mounted system that the U.S. Army hopes will protect soldiers from small drones, according to a July 31 Defense Department statement. Leonardo was awarded an initial $16 million contract by the Army in July 2017 to develop a counter-UAV capability dubbed the Mobile Low, Slow Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Integrated Defense System, or MLIDS, with hopes of deploying “numerous production systems in early summer 2018."
"The countdown to the first orbital rocket launch from UK soil has officially begun," said Patrick Wood, Lockheed Martin's UK Country Executive for Space. "The UK Government has stated its desire to grow the UK's space sector to ten percent of the global space economy by 2030. We are proud to be selected to help them achieve this goal. This initiative will not only spark advancements in science and innovation, it will create new opportunities for current and future UK-based suppliers to become part of the next space age."
written by Jeff Foust (Space News)
The U.K. Space Agency, in the second of a two-part announcement about its launch plans, said it had awarded $31 million to Lockheed Martin and $7 million to Orbex to develop launch systems that will operate from a vertical launch site to be developed in Sutherland, Scotland. The agency announced the location of the launch site, but not its users, July 15. Lockheed Martin will use the funding to establish launch operations from Sutherland as well as develop what it calls the Small Launch Orbital Maneuvering Vehicle (SL-OMV), an upper stage that will be manufactured by Moog in the U.K. to place up to six six-unit cubesats into orbit.
written by Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. (Breaking Defense)
With its eyes firmly on Russia, the US Army is racing to field 8×8 Strykers with an array of weapons that can down enemy aircraft — from drones to helicopters to jets — and incidentally make enemy tanks think twice. The first prototypes will be delivered next year, with up to 144 (four battalions) by 2022, although the contract details are still being negotiated. With the IM-SHORAD (Initial Maneuver Short Range Air Defense) Stryker, “you’ll have more combat power, more lethality, than the Bradley fighting vehicle,” says Ed House, the retired Army infantry colonel who runs the program for Leonardo DRS.
written by Jen Judson (Defense News)
The U.S. Army’s interim short-range air defense system, which will urgently fill a capability gap identified a few years ago in the European theater, has crystallized. The Army went through a selection process through the Department of Defense Ordnance Technology Consortium to determine the best collection of vendors to build prototypes.
Tom Menker, business development & government relations representative at Air Tractor, discusses the company’s AT-802U multi-mission aircraft, why its ISR capabilities make it a good fit for the US Air Force despite its elimination from the service’s light-attack experiment aircraft competition, the aircraft’s specifications and more during a May 18, 2018, interview with Defense & Aerospace Report Editor and Host Vago Muradian at the National Defense Industrial Association’s 2018 Special Operations Forces Industry Conference, held May 21-24 in Tampa, Fla.
Leonardo DRS has a SHORAD system that is fully integrated onto the Stryker. The centerpiece is its “reconfigurable integration weapons platform,” made by its partner Moog, according to Ed House, DRS Land Systems’ business development manager, who spoke to Defense News at Global Force...
Last year in July, Leonardo DRS announced that it has received a contract award from the US Army for up to U$16 million, under an urgent operational need, to develop a counter-unmanned aerial system (C-UAS) capability to protect soldiers from enemy drones...
ADAPT member company Moog has donated an EOS M270 Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) system to Colorado School of Mines to further advance additive manufacturing research collaboration between the ADAPT Center and the Laser Machining Group led by Dr. Jeff Squier.
