In February 2010, a EUR 280 million contract launched the Athena-Fidus (Access on THeatres for European allied forces NAtions-French Italian Dual Use Satellite) satellite program. The program is similar to the concept behind the US/Australian WGS, aiming to complement hardened satellite systems with a non-hardened broadband system.
France’s recent scramble to find the satellite bandwidth required to operate its Heron/Harfang UAVs in Afghanistan illustrates the project’s immediate military relevance. Once operational, the Athena-Fidus system will be used by the French, Belgian and Italian armed forces, as well as the civil protection services of France and Italy.
With over a half million US soldiers in uniform, the US Army has the formidable task of providing human resources (HR) services to all of them. To help with this massive HR requirement, the Army uses contractors.
The primary office that handles HR outsourcing is the Army’s HRsolutions Program Office launched in 2004. HRsolutions manages 4 competitively awarded HR contracts in the areas of studies and analysis, recruitment and retention, personnel services and support, and management and administrative support.
HRsolutions recently awarded 12 multiple-award indefinite-delivery/ indefinite-quantity contracts for the HR studies and analysis program, worth up to $1.3 billion in total, for the period 2010-2015. The office expects to award HR contracts in the other areas in the next few months.
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In February 2009, SELEX Galileo announced a GBP 19 million contract from the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) to develop and produce an initial Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) Radar prototype. After rigorous ground and compact antenna test range testing, the radar is planned to fly on a Royal Air Force Typhoon aircraft in the UK.
With the EUR 9 billion multinational Tranche 3A purchase, total orders for the Eurofighter reached 559 machines. Even if Tranche 3B never materializes and exports stall, those fighters represent a large investment that will attract upgrades over their lifetimes. Once of the most important upgrades involves replacing the Euroradar consortium’s ECR-90 mechanically-scanned array with a modern AESA radar that offers better resolution, multitasking, upgradeability, and reliability. Euroradar’s CAESAR AESA has already participated in flight trials on the Typhoon, but the UK MoD seems to have something else in mind…
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Submarines with improving stealth and attack capability – particularly modern diesel attack submarines – are proliferating worldwide. Locating these relatively inexpensive but extremely quiet boats presents a challenge to the US Navy, then Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Mullen warned Congress in 2007 testimony [pdf].
To counter this threat, the Navy is investigating a distributed and netted approach to anti-submarine warfare (ASW). Among the ASW programs the Navy is considering is the Reliable Acoustic Path Vertical Line Array (RAPVLA). The RAPVLA is a deep water, bottom-mounted, high-grain sensor system that can automatically detect, classify, localize, track and report contacts of interest, such as stealth submarines.
Lockheed Martin recently received a $7 million order for applied research in support of the RAPVLA program…
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