Iraq: US Cougar 6×6, Polish M1114 HMMWV, Iraqi police van
Small business qualifier Force Protection Industries, Inc. in Ladson, SC has received a $221.7 million firm-fixed-priced delivery order #0004 under previously awarded contract (M67854-07-D-5031) for additional 395 Cougar 4×4 Category I MRUV patrol vehicles, and 60 Cougar 6×6 Category II JERRV squad vehicles under Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) contracts for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles. This order brings their total awards under the MRAP program to 1,780: 760 CAT I vehicles and 1,020 CAT II, to make up 48% of the vehicles ordered so far from the 9 (now 7) competitors.
Work will be performed in Ladson, SC, and by various subcontractors, as noted below…
French President Nikolas Sarkozy spent time with aerospace & defense industry leaders at the Paris Air Show on June 23rd. The speech took place a week after recent Parliamentary elections that featured a center-right majority, but resulted in a loss of some outgoing seats for Sarkozy’s UMP party and a much smaller margin of victory than previously expected.
Defense-Aerospace reports that the French President’s speech pointedly failed to repeat his election promise to keep defense spending to 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Instead, he pushed for a bottom-up review of ongoing and projected weapon programs based on the new government’s ongoing audit of current defense acquisition efforts, which is due in July 2007. Sarkozy also called for more “rationalization” of programs into multinational European efforts, and added that France must change the way it buys its weapons to reflect a prioritized expression of capability requirements.
Sarkozy’s comments, and their implications, reportedly echo similar warnings from Defense Minister Hervé Morin…
As anyone who has ever dealt with them knows, national defense organizations aren’t exactly paperless. Over in Britain,
Ministry of Defense officials in Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) realized that several MoD office supplies contracts were due to end in September 2007. They decided to combine all the planned purchases to maximize leverage with suppliers, whereupon the Office of Government Commerce saw an opportunity for wider collaboration. While other departments were added, the DE&S team commissioned Group Supplies Ltd. to help structure a commercial tender process; the company advised MoD to split the contract and undertake 4 auctions on sequential days, with the GBP 110 million stationery supplies requirement held the 1st day.
The result was a reverse auction contract involving 9 government departments, with winning bids totalling GBP 132 million in an outcome expected to save the MoD GBP 50 million over 4 years, and save all participants GBP 100 million overall. As of October 1/07, stationery will be supplied by Lyreco Uk Ltd, paper will be supplied by Office Depot UK Ltd., and Westcoast Ltd DBA Orion Media Marketing will supply magnetic media and electronic office supplies. Deliveries will take place to the UK MoD, and to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, Home Office, Dept. of Constitutional Affairs, Metropolitan Police, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Treasury, Office of Government Commerce, and Prison Service. MoD release.
The Bell Helicopter – Boeing Tilt Rotor Team in Amarillo, TX received an $88.1 million modification to a previously awarded cost-plus-fix-fee contract (N00019-96-C-0054) to accept Engineering Change Proposal V-22-0704 for rework of 4 Lot III MV-22 (Marine variant) Low Rate Initial Production (LRIP) tiltrotor aircraft used in testing and evaluation to MV-22 Osprey Block A/B operational configuration.
For those counting, that’s $22 million for each refitted aircraft. MV-22 Ospreys are currently headed to Iraq for deployment, reportedly with significant limitations on their use in order to avoid a catastrophe for the program.
Work will be performed in Amarillo, TX (42%); Ridley Park, PA (30%); and Fort Worth, TX (28%) and is expected to be complete in November 2009. Contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md., is the contracting activity.
This course will go from fighter fundamentals training to a “capstone” course that takes experienced pilots and significantly improves their tactical proficiency. Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals in Texas is a pre-cursor to F-16 Block 60-transition training, which UAE pilots will receive in Tucson, AZ. The US DSCA announced the request on June 18/07 as:
In response, one of the early-stage Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) approaches involves thinking entirely outside the sonar box. We talk about “submariner dolphins” – but maybe the creature they really need to emulate is the shark. Now a recent contract indicates that the US military is making real progress toward that goal…
Militaries around the world are moving to modernize and transform themselves to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Our mission is to deliver a monthly cross-section of relevant, on-target stories, news, and analysis that will help experts and interested laypeople alike stay up to speed on key military developments and issues as we head into the USA’s Memorial Day weekend. Stories are broken down by military category and presented as fast bullet points that orient you quickly, with accompanying links if you wish to pursue more in-depth treatments.
This monthly briefing comes from a team a team that includes professional publications Defense Industry Daily and Aviation Week & Space Technology, with Winds of Change.NET acting as the briefing’s “neutral ground.”
Some of This Month’s Targets of Opportunity Include: Upgraded A-10s; Orbital Express; Hypersonics; Pod people; nEUROns; AARGMs, Spikes, & MOPs; Project Sandblaster; Compound helicopters; Stealth going mainstream; Routers in space; UAV swarms; Land Warrior RIP, Counter-sniper systems; Mine-protected vehicles go big; Trophy ready in Israel – or how about a net instead; Border robots with guns; Non-lethal weapons; UCAVs from carriers; the ASDS fiasco; Firing NEMO; Virginia’s new nose; Intercontinental cans of whup-ass; Paying for jets, not parts; EFP land mines – and the response; Inventory outsourcing in US military; Medical research; Bulgarian telemedicine; Privatized air tankers? Afghanistan doctrine; Canada’s tank lesson in Afghanistan; 6-Day Satellites; Transformation & Air Power; Lebanon post-mortems; Medals for UAV crews? And much, much more…!
Countries like the USA and Britain are racing to field mine-protected vehicles, but some countries have been building them for a number of years now. Krauss-Maffei Wegmann’s (KMW) Dingo 2, with its v-hull capsule plus composite blast pan design, is a case in point. At 12.5t/ 30,000 pounds gross vehicle, weight, however, the Dingo is lighter than most of the American MRAP competition’s Class II JERRV squad vehicle offerings; it’s even lighter than a couple of the Class I MRUV patrol vehicle offerings. While the Dingo has been exported, North American marketing license holder Textron Land & Marine Systems chose to offer its own M1117 ICV vehicle for the USA’s MRAP program instead.
Now KMW has received an order from Germany’s BWB (Bundesamt fur Wehrtechnik und Beschaffung – Federal Office for Defence Technology and Procurement) defense procurement office to design and deliver a new, larger mine-resistant vehicle for the German Army as a complement to the Dingo. The first vehicle will be delivered as early as November 2007, and looks likely to strengthen KMW’s positioning within the growing global market for blast-resistant vehicles…
Textron’s M1117 Guardian Armored Security Vehicle (ASV) was recently removed from the MRAP program after the vehicle reportedly failed some of the tests at Aberdeen. The stretched M1117 ICV(Infantry Carrier Vehicle) was one of the lightest vehicles in the competition, and its original 3-man, 12,500 GVW(Gross Vehicle Weight, total loaded capacity) version remains popular with military police (M1117 ASV) and artillery spotting teams (M1200 Armored Knight). They provide better mine and ballistics protection than the Hummer, coupled with an armored turret that offers both mounts for advanced sensors, and patrol vehicle firepower overmatch via a .50 cal machine gun and 40mm grenade machine gun combination. Once upon a time we would have simply called vehicles like this “armored cars,” but perhaps that’s too simple these days.
“nEUROn UCAV Project Rolling Down the Runway (updated)” covers the multi-national European R&D program to field a stealthy, sub-sonic unmanned aircraft with range and payload capabilities that approach those of manned fighters. Now it has spawned a spin-off project that aims to take a number of its technologies, and use them to create a Medium Altitude, Long Endurance (MALE) UAV system that will compete against market alternatives like the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, Thales UK/Elbit Watchkeeper WK450, IAI’s Heron, et. al.
