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U.S. FCS Program May Be Opened to Britain, Australia National Defense Magazine Facing budgetary limits, rising costs, increased scrutiny, and difficulties with several major components including the JTRS radio/networking system, the U.S. Army's $120+ billion Future Combat System led by prime contractors Boeing and SAIC Corp. may be about to look abroad for assistance. While FCS was not designed with several participating nations in mind, the Army's Security Assistance Command has been involved in FCS for the past several years to anticipate foreign military sales and government-to-government collaboration. In addition, several nations have expressed interest in buying specific FCS platforms once they are developed. Kevork Juskalian, a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor in the PM UA-T office, tells National Defense magazine that the possibility of foreign military sales is "still on the drawing board." With that said, several U.S. coalition partners, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and France, are in the process of developing their own future force and/or advanced infrantry programs that could be compatible with FCS technologies. The most significant step this year will be to sign technology-partnering agreements with the United Kingdom and Australia, said Juskalian. In addition, the U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency signed a general agreement with Singapore last year to conduct experiments and develop land warfare concepts and technology. Army??™s Future Combat Systems Could See International Partners Roxana Tiron, NDM U.S. Army officials are in the early stages of discussing foreign military sales and international collaboration on the service??™s most ambitious modernization program. Like all Army programs, the Future Combat Systems, a network of 18 manned and unmanned systems, is designed to respond to the service??™s requirements, and not overtly to foreign military demands. But the Army??™s Security Assistance Command has been involved in FCS for the past several years to anticipate foreign military sales and government-to-government collaboration. Unlike the multi-service, multi-national joint strike fighter program, FCS was not designed with several participating nations in mind, said Lt. Col. John Hinds, who works in the office of the program manager for unit-of-action technologies at Fort Belvoir, Va. But several nations have expressed interest in buying FCS platforms once they are developed, officials said. Since the $120 billion plus program is in its beginning stages, the possibility of foreign military sales is ???still on the drawing board,??? said Kevork Juskalian, a Booz Allen Hamilton contractor in the PM UA-T office. FCS program officials recently had to iron out oversight problems in the contract with Boeing, the prime contractor. The program also is likely to face a series of technology and timeline hurdles. Several U.S. coalition partners, such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and France, are in the process of developing their own future force programs. The most significant step this year will be to sign technology-partnering agreements with the United Kingdom and Australia, said Juskalian. The U.S. Army and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency signed an agreement with Singapore last year to conduct experiments, and develop land warfare concepts and technology. These agreements ultimately are aimed at establishing interoperability with coalition partners and are not necessarily intended to spur FCS sales abroad, said Neil Baumgardner, who works for Boeing??™s FCS international business development office. ???We are in agreement that we are a long way away before foreign military sales of individual platforms will take place,??? he said. ???It is our understanding that the U.S. government is still reviewing the implications of FCS and potential foreign military sales.??? Boeing and SAIC Corp. are the system integrators. Boeing accepts proposals from foreign companies, but all those are subject to State Department technology transfer regulations, said Baumgardner. Boeing, through its FCS international business development office, is marketing the system-of-systems common operating environment. But as discussions are taking place on how to communicate and work with U.S. allies, the backbone for FCS communications now is suffering a serious setback. The joint tactical radio system, known as JTRS, is experiencing delays and is undergoing a management shakeup. Apart from JTRS, there are a series of other challenges in developing FCS technology, said Murphy, a senior engineer in the PM UA-T office. FCS vehicles have to be transportable in the Air Force??™s C-130 cargo planes, and have to be able to be dropped from the air. Fast Predator Turnaround Delivers Urban Assault Punch to Marines Defense Industry Daily www.defenseindustrydaily.com Responding to an urgent request from warfighters, Lockheed Martin expanded the capabilities of its Predator anti-tank weapon and delivered 400 rounds to the U.S. Marine Corps in less than six months, prompting praise from, SRAW project officer Michael Woodson at the Marine Corps Systems Command in Quantico, VA. The U.S. Marine Corps recently asked Lockheed Martin to modify the shoulder-fired, short-range Predator anti-tank weapon into a direct-attack urban assault weapon for use in Iraq. Renamed the Short-Range Assault Weapon-Multiple Purpose Variant (SRAW-MPV), the new urban assault missile has a multiple-purpose blast warhead instead of a top-attack anti-armor warhead, enabling it to defeat a variety of targets such as buildings and bunkers as well as light-armored vehicles, "technicals," et. al. These modifications put the weapon in the rare class of a short-range soft-launch assault weapon that can be fired from inside enclosures like buildings with just single hearing protection. In addition, its point-and-shoot, fire-and-forget inertial guidance system minimizes the both gunner exposure and involvement in the middle of a firefight, and corrects for in-flight disturbances such as cross-wind to ensure greater accuracy. The Lockheed Martin Predator is a lightweight close range anti-tank missile system which complements the Javelin anti-tank missile. The shoulder-mounted fire and forget missile weighs less than 10kg. Predator fills an intermediate role, beneath the Javelin but with a longer range and higher lethality than the AT4 and other assault rockets. Both the Predator and SRAW-MPV versions are fully ready to deploy. A total of 700 rounds are due to be retrofitted with the new warhead, which is most of the USA's missile stockpile. In February 2002, the United States Marine Corps signed a contract with Lockheed Martin for low-rate initial production (LRIP) of 330 Predator systems. A second LRIP contract for 400 systems was signed in January 2003, after which further production was cancelled. Lockheed Martin, MBDA and Insys also came together to propose a modified version called Kestrel for the UK Next Generation Light Anti-Armour Weapon (NLAW) requirement, but lost out to MBT-LAW led by Saab Bofors Dynamics in May of 2002. Nevertheless, the Predator system may still have a future beyond the current upgrade cycle. The U.S. Army is currently evaluating options for upgrading its urban assault weapon capabilities, and many U.S. allies have similar urban warfare requirements or are considering them in light of Iraq's lessons. Pakistan's Defense Budget Rises 15.5% Defense Industry Daily www.defenseindustrydaily.com Pakistan recently unveiled a 1.09 trillion rupee (USD $18.16 billion) national budget for 2005-2006. The budget increased defense expenditures from 194 billion rupees in 2004-2005 to 223 billion rupees, a rise of more than 15%. Spending on development will also rise, and the overall increase in expenditures is 21%. The largest single item is for the country's debt payments, which amount to more than 300 billion rupees. The government also vowed June 6 to undertake a wide network of roads, dams and other infrastructural work under the 272-billion-rupee Public Sector Development Program. The moves will be financed by a combination of tax revenue increases and borrowing. Pakistan's GDP rose by 8.4% in 2004-2005, the highest recorded in 20 years. EU and Ukraine Seal Galileo and Aviation Agreement European Commission Brussels -- Negotiations on Ukraine??™s participation in Europe??™s satellite radio navigation programme finally reached approval. The agreement was initialled today in Kiev by Fransois Lamoureux, Director-General for Energy and Transport at the European Commission, and by Oleh Shamshul, deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. A first agreement between the EU and Ukraine in the field of civil aviation was also initialled today. The agreement will give any European airline access to the Ukrainian market from any Member State of the EU and is a first step towards the creation of a Common Aviation Area with Ukraine. The Galileo agreement initialled today with Ukraine provides for co-operative activities on satellite navigation in a wide range of sectors, particularly in science and technology, industrial manufacturing, service and market development, as well as standardisation, frequency and certification. It also represents the first step towards the extension of EGNOS (European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service) to Ukraine and the participation of the country in the programme through a stake in the GALILEO Joint Undertaking. Ukraine is one of the eight countries within the world space community with significant technological knowledge on space programmes and important achievements on GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) applications, equipment, user segment and regional technology. The Ukrainian space industry is among the world??™s leader in the design and production of launchers and GNSS components. The Galileo agreement with Ukraine confirms the European Union??™s ambition to further stimulate international cooperation. Ukraine is the third country formally joining the GALILEO programme after China and Israel. Discussions are under way with India, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, South Korea, Canada, Argentina and Australia. The ever growing interest of third countries to participate in the GALILEO programme represents a big boost for the GNSS market, which is potentially considerable: 3 billion receivers and revenues of some 275 billion euros per year by 2020 worldwide, and the creation of more than 150. 000 highly qualified jobs in Europe alone. The aviation agreement is the first agreement in the field of civil aviation between the European Union and Ukraine. The agreement brings existing bilateral air services agreements between the Member States and Ukraine in line with EU legislation. It ends the national provisions that do not authorise European carriers to fly to Ukraine unless they leave from their countries of origin. All 25 bilateral agreements between EU Member States and Ukraine will remain in force with the exception of those provisions changed by today??™s agreement. The Commission has initialled similar agreements with 15 countries worldwide including Australia, New Zealand, Bulgaria, Romania, Morocco as well as Georgia and Azerbaijan. DRS Technologies Receives $43 Million In U.S. Army Contracts For Next-Generation Thermal Weapon Sights DRS Technologies Parsippany, NJ, June 7 -- DRS Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: DRS) announced today that it has received $43 million in new orders to produce a family of next-generation Thermal Weapon Sights for U.S. Army ground force applications. DRS received the new orders from the U.S. Army??™s Communications-Electronics Command (CECOM) in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, acting on behalf of Program Executive Office Soldier. For these awards, DRS will produce light, medium and heavy Thermal Weapon Sights (TWS), which will utilize the company??™s uncooled infrared technology. Work for these contracts will be accomplished by the company??™s DRS Optronics facilities in Palm Bay and Melbourne, Florida, and DRS Infrared Technologies facilities in Dallas, Texas. Deliveries of more than 4,000 high-performance, affordable, reliable and soldier-friendly TWS will commence in October 2005 and continue through October 2006. These orders are part of a competitively secured five-year contract awarded to DRS in March 2004. The contract has a base value of $118 million and a total value of $375 million, including options. "DRS is an industry leader in uncooled, high-performance, thermal imaging systems, and the TWS is a cornerstone program for DRS in this core technology area," said Fred L. Marion, president of DRS??™s Surveillance & Reconnaissance Group. "The TWS is optimized to place increased lethality in the hands of individual war fighters, enhancing their survivability on the open and urban battlefields. Moving a key DRS soldier systems product line into high-rate, multi-year production, the TWS program will contribute immediately to the military??™s current and future force objectives." Using advanced microbolometer-based infrared technology, the DRS family of light, medium and heavy TWS will provide U.S. Army soldiers and armament crews with greater range of threat detection and wider field of view at a reduced cost. These sights will better equip the war fighter to see the battlefield and safely engage the enemy. The TWS produced under these latest orders will mount onto a variety of light, medium and heavy weapons, including M2 and M240 machine guns, M4, M16 and M82 assault rifles, M24 Sniper Weapon System, M107 anti-materiel gun, M136 rocket launcher, MK19 and M203 grenade launchers, and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon. Similar next-generation thermal weapon sights produced by DRS have broad application for various missions of U.S. military services, including the Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Special Operations, in addition to the Army. The variety of DRS??™s uncooled infrared sensors ensures availability to international militaries, as well. The company??™s thermal weapon sights product line can be used for homeland defense initiatives, such as first responders and government customs and border control/protection agencies, in addition to private security companies, domestic law enforcement agencies, and for applications where the protection of high-value assets and critical infrastructure from terrorist threats are priorities. |
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