UK and US consider assisted carriage systems
Posted on Friday 23 October 2009 at 09:42 AM - 1 Comments - Post Comment - Link
Lockheed Martin's Squad Mission Support System (SMSS) is being lined up for a limited deployment with US forces to Afghanistan in 2010 in a bid to reduce the burden carried by soldiers in the field.
Speaking to Jane's at the Association of the US Army exhibition in Washington, DC, on 5 October, Lockheed Martin executives said the army was attempting to pearl pendant raise funding to send two SMSS vehicles to Afghanistan with a light infantry unit.
The SMSS completed limited user tests and a military utility assessment in August following from tests at Fort Benning, Georgia, in November and December 2008.
A capabilities production document is currently under consideration at the Headquarters of the Department of cultured pearl jewlery the US Army and if SMSS becomes an official programme, Lockheed Martin told Jane's it would expect an initial requirement for around seven systems.
Elsewhere, Lockheed Martin has confirmed that it has offered its Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC) exoskeleton to the UK Ministry of Defence's (MoD's) Reducing the Burden on the Dismounted Soldier Capability Vision. The MoD programme is expected to freshwater pearl consider a number of assisted carriage systems.
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Ditching A400M would hand monopoly to US, says French Senate committee
Posted on Friday 23 October 2009 at 09:39 AM - 1 Comments - Post Comment - Link
Abandoning the pan-European Airbus Military A400M airlifter programme would be "tantamount to handing US military transport manufacturers a quasi-monopoly for the next 40 years", a French Senate committee concluded on 10 February.
Josselin de Rohan, chairman of the Senate's foreign affairs, defence and armed forces committee, added that such a move would also akoya pearl necklace "greatly damage the credibility of Europe's efforts to build a strong defence identity".
The comments came as the committee considered a 93-page Senate report on the technical woes of the EUR20 billion (USD26 billion) A400M project that has seen deliveries of the first aircraft set back from 2009 to a possible 2012-13 timeframe. The committee said that the programme could face further delays and is likely to entail substantial cost overruns.
The report came amid rising speculation in European military and industry circles that the seven governments that ordered a total of 180 A400Ms in 2003 could look to naughty castles alternatives because of uncertainty over delivery dates and the final cost.
A member of the panel, Jean-Pierre Masseret, predicted that regular deliveries of the airlifter would not begin until 2014-15 and conceded that A400M would cost more than initially estimated.
He refused, however, to be drawn on the value of cost overruns, claiming it was impossible at the current stage in the programme to biwa pearl estimate a figure.
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Indian government defends major hike in budget
Posted on Friday 23 October 2009 at 09:36 AM - 1 Comments - Post Comment - Link
Indian defence spending will rise by more than a third to INR1,417 billion (USD32.7 billion) in Fiscal Year 2009, according to the interim budget presented by acting finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on 16 February.
This figure represents a 34.2 per cent increase from playground equipment the proposed 2008 budget of INR1,057 billion and a 23.6 per cent increase from the revised 2008 defence spending estimate of INR1,146 billion.
The allocation is nearly 15 per cent of the government's total interim budget of INR9,532.31 billion for the fiscal year beginning on 1 April.
The interim budget is to finance expenditure ahead of the general election scheduled for May 2009.
Of the INR1,417 billion defence budget, planned expenditure has risen 18 per cent for 2009/10 from INR736 billion to freshwater pearl jewelry INR868.79 billion. This includes INR548.24 billion for capital expenditure as against INR410 billion in the revised estimates for 2008-09.
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South Korea considers U-turn over foreign direct investment
Posted on Friday 23 October 2009 at 09:34 AM - 1 Comments - Post Comment - Link
The South Korean government is formulating a plan to permit foreign direct investment (FDI) as it looks to the sale of stakes in state-held companies including Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) and Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI).
Kim Dong-soo, head of the Ministry of Knowledge Economy's business investment policy bureau, confirmed to Jane's on 19 February that the plan would be submitted to pearl strand government shortly. "The economic situation is not so good but we are looking at the sale of a number of companies," he said. "We have not decided about the details of the sale, we have no list of specific companies and there are no deadlines yet."
Such a move would mark an abrupt change in South Korean policy.
The country's official news agency Yonhap had previously reported that the formation of the plan - which outlines a project to naughty castles sell stakes in companies that received bailout funds during the 1997-98 Asian economic crisis - was approved by government on 13 February.
A total of 14 companies received such funds in the late 1990s, including DSME and KAI, the latter being the result of a merger between the aerospace divisions of Samsung, Hyundai and Daewoo.
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Going with the flow: Australia's defence industry
Posted on Friday 23 October 2009 at 09:28 AM - 1 Comments - Post Comment - Link
Australia's defence industry, much of it foreign owned, is nervously awaiting the publication of a defence White Paper that will provide a clear alignment between strategy, capability and budget.
Related work includes a review that will define future force structure and capability needs, together with eight companion reviews across defence activities ranging from IT to freshwater pearl jewelry industry. These will provide a key input to developing defence business and budget priorities up to 2030.
The Australian defence market is currently ranked eighth in the world by Jane's Defence Budgets in terms of its growth rate, market size and accessibility for international defence companies. In absolute terms, it has the 14th largest defence budget, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
While the centre-left government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has reaffirmed its intention to increase the AUD22 billion (USD14.5 billion) defence budget by three per cent in real terms each year until at least 2017-18, this pledge may yet fall a victim, in whole or in part, to pearl necklace the global financial crisis.
With the Australian Department of Defence also facing spiralling operating costs that are unlikely to be offset by internal savings, the funding of big-ticket items such as up to 100 Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightening II Joint Strike Fighters (JSFs) and a possible fourth Air Warfare Destroyer (AWD) now seems likely to threaten the finance available for other capabilities.
Publication of the White Paper, originally scheduled for December 2008 but now expected in April-May, will be followed closely by a new rolling 10-year Defence Capability Plan (DCP) detailing major equipment purchases up to 2019.
Although substantial infrastructure and sustainment contracts have continued to gemstone necklace flow since the commissioning of the White Paper in December 2007, a number of acquisition approvals have been held up and industry is anxiously waiting to assess its commercial implications.
The Australian defence industry spans the four major sectors of maritime, aerospace, land and electronics and is focused almost entirely on meeting the requirements of the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) - the government agency responsible for the acquisition and through-life support of capital equipment and systems for the Australian Defence Force (ADF).
In 2007-08 the DMO was managing approximately AUD100 billion worth of projects and sustainment and domestic industry carried out AUD4.29 billion worth of acquisition and sustainment work for the organisation.
To this industry output can be added annual exports of button pearl defence and defence-related products worth some AUD600 million, about half of which originated from the top 50 Australian-based suppliers of materiel to the DMO.
While nearly 32,000 people are employed in the industry on a full-time basis, about 50,000 are estimated to be working on DMO projects on either a part-time or full-time basis, according to DMO figures.
Image: Export orders for Australian shipbuilding pearl strand wholesale include the construction by the then Tenix Defence of two ANZAC-class frigates and two offshore patrol vessels, including HMNZS Wellington, for the Royal New Zealand Navy. (New Zealand Defence Force)
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