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.
