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France has picked Nexter in a tender for a light multirole reconnaissance vehicle, dubbed “Light VBMR,” dealing a heavy blow to close contender Renault Trucks Defense, three executives said.

“Nexter has won,” a defense executive said Nov. 24.

The procurement office, Direction Générale de l’Armement, called Nexter last Friday with news of the selection, which is unofficial and allows the other competitors time to contest the decision, a second executive said. RTD received its letter this week.


The Armed Forces Ministry will eventually announce the award, which will boost Nexter’s share in the French Army’s Scorpion program, as the state-owned company is already a joint prime contractor for the Jaguar combat reconnaissance vehicle and Griffon multirole troop carrier.

Nexter and RTD declined comment. “The competition is still going on,” said a DGA spokesman, declining further comment.

The upper end of the range of unit price offered by Nexter in the tender was €900,000 (US $1.1 million), said the second executive, while the lower end was €700,000, the third source said. The DGA and French Army had set a requirement for a 10-ton, four-wheel drive vehicle with a high level level of protection and onboard electronics which hooked into a single communications and command network.

Industry officials replied that a more realistic weight was 15 tons, a fourth executive said, adding that a more realistic price range for a fully equipped and armed Light VBMR was €800,000-€900,000 per unit.

That pricing compares with a price range of €700,000-€900,000 for Nexter’s Titus, a six-wheel drive multirole armored vehicle, a fifth executive said.

Some 400 units of the Light VBMR are due for delivery by 2025 in the first phase of Scorpion, a first batch of a planned total 1,500 over a number of years, the second executive said. An option for a further 500 brings the total to 2,000 units.

RTD has previously signalled winning the Light VBMR deal was strategic to the company, which has supplied about 95 percent of light vehicles to the French Army. A major part of securing the contract is maintenance and spares over some 30 years of the vehicle’s working life.

The Light VBMR contract is seen with political significance by those close to Nexter and RTD.

Losing the tender “is a pity, but not catastrophic,” said an executive on the RTD side. RTD has other projects on hand and is active in exports which account for 40 percent of annual sales of €450 million. A failure would have been a “catastrophe” for Nexter, which relies on the Scorpion program.

Those on the Nexter side also see a political dimension, with RTD losing in part due to it being a unit of Swedish truck maker Volvo, a foreign ownership which cast doubt over its future. Nexter submitted a bid which met “100 percent” of the technology requirement set by the DGA, said a source close to Nexter.

A selection of Nexter was the government’s response to Volvo’s attempt to divest RTD, a key unit in the cancelled sale of the Volvo Group Governmental Sales division, the second executive said. Rival bidders CMI and KNDS had priced into their valuations RTD’s winning the Light VBMR deal when they submitted their offers for VGGS.

Now Nexter has effectively won the Light VBMR deal, RTD’s valuation has probably halved compared to the rival offers of some €400 million, the executive said.

Nexter, which specializes in systems integration and armored hulls, effectively submitted a concept vehicle, which will now be designed, developed, built and tested for delivery around 2021-2022. Texelis, based in Limoges, southwest France, is expected to supply the driveline.

The Light VBMR will complement the Griffon VBMR, with a first delivery of the latter next year in a planned total 1,722 units. The two vehicles will replace some 3,000 aging VAB troop carriers.

Thales teamed with RTD, with an offer based on the latter’s Bastion in the tender, an executive said.

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The French Armed Forces Ministry has received a first batch of 50 missiles and 20 firing posts of the medium-range MMP missile, a fifth-generation weapon to replace the aging Milan anti-tank system, the government procurement office said Thursday.

“France’s defense procurement agency, the Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA), has accepted the delivery to the French Armed Forces of the first batch of 50 missiles and 20 firing posts from the new MMP system,” the DGA said in a statement.

The French authorities ordered the MMP in 2013 from MBDA after rival pitches from the Javelin joint venture between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon and from Rafael for the Spike. That French order helps MBDA to pitch the MMP in foreign markets, where the European company seeks to replace some 400,000 Milan anti-tank missiles in service amid fierce international competition.

The MMP has both fire-and-forget and man-in-the-loop capabilities, the DGA said.

That fire-and-forget capacity follows the French order in 2010 for 260 Javelins. The U.S. weapons had that capability, which the French Army had requested for troops then deployed in Afghanistan. MBDA had offered its Milan ER (extended response) but was met with rejection, as that weapon used a man-in-the-loop approach, which responded to a previous concept of operations of the French Army.

The DGA program director declined to give a value on the MMP order, but did say it was comparable to the Milan program. There was interest in the missile from foreign services, he said. No further details were available.

The first batch of MMP weapons arrived Nov. 13-23 and is an initial delivery of an order for 1,750 missiles and 400 firing posts with shipment by 2025, the procurement office said. The DGA, which awarded a 2013 contract to MBDA to develop and build the missile, certified the weapon in July, allowing the company to launch full production.

The DGA had a target order for 2,850 missiles, the procurement office said in a Dec. 5, 2013, statement, when the contract for development and production was announced. That total requirement leaves open the possibility of further orders, with the procurement office effectively taking up options for the missiles.

A delivery of 450 missiles and 175 firing posts was expected between 2014 and 2019, the DGA said in the 2013 announcement.

The initial order for MMP was worth some €550 million (U.S. $652 million), weekly industry magazine Air & Cosmos reported in 2013, with MBDA spending millions of company money to develop the weapon and keep its hold on the market for anti-tank missiles based on sales of Milan missiles.

The MMP will be deployed next year, arming ground troops, cavalry units and special forces. The weapon is due to arm the Jaguar combat and reconnaissance vehicle under the Scorpion program, with first delivery in 2020.

The missile has a range of 4,000 meters and is designed to knock out tanks, with a capability to strike from above in the last phase of flight. The weapon is intended to be precise enough to be guided through a window to hit enemies inside a building and avoid harming civilians. Troops can fire the missile from inside a room — a key capability in urban combat.

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France’s procurement office has revealed it received its 12th A400M airlifter, which is the first in the European program to be fitted with two underwing pods for in-flight refueling of fighter jets.

“The Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA) took delivery Nov. 22, 2017, the 12th A400M Atlas military transport aircraft, to be handed over to the Air Force,” the DGA said in a Nov. 30 statement. The A400Ms already in service will have the fuel pod added as they undergo a retrofit over time.

The latest A400M will be flown to the air base at Orleans, south of Paris, in the next few days. France is due to receive a further three A400Ms by 2019, as set out by the 2014-19 military budget law.

The A400M program still poses problems in fitting capabilities and cutting costs, Airbus said Oct. 31 in its nine-month financial results.

“However, achievement of the contractual technical capabilities and associated costs remain highly challenging,” the aircraft company said. The A400M program also faces “challenges” in winning export orders on time, cutting costs, industrial efficiency and commercial exposure, “which could impact the program significantly,” Airbus said.

Talks continue with client nations and OCCAR, the European procurement agency, to “de-risk” the program, the company said.

Airbus Defence and Space is working to deliver two key capabilities sought by France, namely in-flight refueling of helicopters and dropping paratroopers from doors on both sides of the fuselage.

Airbus has signed a contract with Cobham for the British firm to build a hose for helicopter refueling, with a test flight expected toward the end of 2018, an Airbus spokesman said.

Test parachute jumps have been made out the fuselage doors, backed by detailed computer modeling on the aerodynamics, he said. Work continues on increasing weight and various pallets for cargo airdrops from the rear ramp.

Work on finding solutions to meet those and other requirements has eaten into Airbus’ cash pile, prompting the company to ask client nations to put a cap on financial penalties for failing to deliver the capabilities. Germany, for instance, withholds 15 percent of cash as the aircraft fails to meet the contracted capacities.

A planned meeting of ministers in London of seven client nations and Airbus was postponed to February from mid-November, Reuters reported. That meeting is to discuss the company’s request for fines to be capped.

Airbus has so far this year delivered 17 A400Ms, with expectations for 20 shipped by the end of 2017. The company delivered 17 units last year, three short of the target.

Airbus last year booked a charge of €2.2 billion (U.S. $2.6 billion) to cover financial penalties and slow deliveries.

The company has asked a reset of the financial penalties from the client nations Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain and Turkey. Malaysia is also a customer.

The A400M is designed to offer three-point aerial refueling, with two underwing pods and a central hose and drogue system from the fuselage.

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Jura said:

I think
bd popeye
didn't like the idea of opposite gender crew of a submarine

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C’est fait ! Après deux ans de formation, les premiers officiers féminins ont intégré l’équipage d’un sous-marin français. Il s’agit de l’un des quatre sous-marins nucléaires lanceurs d’engins (SNLE) du type Le Triomphant basés à l’Ile Longue, dans la rade de Brest. Ce type de bâtiment a été choisi du fait de sa taille nettement supérieure à celle des sous-marins nucléaires d’attaque (SNA) du type Rubis, permettant notamment à ces pionnières de disposer de chambres et sanitaires réservés.

Au nombre de quatre, sur un équipage de SNLE comprenant 110 marins, ces femmes, un médecin, un chef de quart opérations et deux officiers énergie, dont une a pris le poste de chef du service chaufferie, ont embarqué sur leur bateau fin novembre. « Elles ont rejoint leur sous-marin il y a une dizaine de jours et s’entrainent désormais au sein de l’équipage, à quai et en mer, en vue de leur première patrouille », a annoncé hier l’amiral Christophe Prazuck, chef d’état-major de la Marine, qui répondait à une question de Mer et Marine lors d’une rencontre à Paris avec l’association des journalistes de défense (AJD).

Le CEMM rappelle qu’il s’agit là d’une expérimentation, « nous y allons pas à pas ». Si l’opération est concluante, la féminisation des sous-marins français pourra être développée, sachant qu’une telle mesure serait à l’avenir facilitée avec l’arrivée des nouveaux SNA du type Barracuda, plus grands que les Rubis et conçus pour pouvoir être éventuellement féminisés.

Au-delà de la symbolique d’ouvrir à des femmes l’un des derniers métiers de l’armée réservé aux hommes, cette initiative, si elle est concluante et monte en puissance, permettrait à la Marine nationale d’élargir ses recrutements à l’ensemble de la société, à une époque où trouver des jeunes acceptant de s’engager dans des carrières si particulières n’est pas toujours chose aisée.

Pour mémoire, c’est au milieu des années 90 que la marine française a commencé à se féminiser. Aujourd’hui, 14.7% des effectifs (9% embarqués) sont des femmes, 67 bâtiments, soit plus de la moitié de la flotte, ayant un équipage mixte. 36 officiers féminins ont à ce jour commandé une unité à la mer.

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Jura said:

now noticed France receives its first A400M fitted with pods for midair refueling

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France has taken delivery of its first Airbus Defence & Space A400M equipped with underwing hose-and-drogue refuelling pods, edging its air force closer to introducing a new tactical tanker capability.

Handed over to the nation's DGA defence procurement agency on 22 November and subsequently flown to Orléans-Bricy air base, MSN62 is the 12th Atlas from France's eventual 50-strong fleet of the type.

The DGA describes the pod-equipped transport as capable of refuelling fighters in flight. "Other aircraft in the fleet will be progressively equipped with this capability during retrofit campaigns," it adds.

The French air force will have received 15 A400Ms by 2019, according to the DGA.

Paris also is acquiring four Lockheed Martin C-130Js, including two tankers capable of refuelling its Airbus Helicopters H225Ms. Its first new-generation Hercules transport completed a first flight from Lockheed's Marietta facility in Georgia in late November.

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Jura said:

Aug 1, 2017

and France, Italy reach deal on Fincantieri's acquisition of STX 18 hours ago

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As Italy and France edge closer to merging their largest military shipyards, the head of Italian defense group Leonardo has proposed a plan designed to ensure his products are used on future Italo-French warships.

Leonardo CEO Alessandro Profumo outlined his plan to an Italian parliamentary commission this week as Italy’s Fincantieri and France’s Naval Group limber up for talks on integrating their operations in a bid to cut down on the fragmentation that characterizes Europe’s naval industry.

Both sides have said they hope to reach a deal in 2018.

Leonardo typically supplies radars and systems to Fincantieri ships, while Thales supplies Naval Group vessels, begging the question of which firm would get the contracts for jointly built ships in the future.

Observers in Italy fear that Thales would have the upper hand because it holds a 35 percent stake in Naval Group, meaning it would have a seat at the table in talks on choosing systems.

Profumo said the solution would be to give Leonardo a seat at the table, too. The way to do that was to engineer a deal between Naval Group and Orizzonte Sistemi Navali, rather than Fincantieri, he said.

OSN is an existing joint venture between Fincantieri and Leonardo, 51 percent controlled by the former and 49 percent by the latter, which was set up to run the manufacture of Italy’s FREMM frigates.

“In the case of an accord between Fincantieri and Naval Group, it will be necessary to organize measures to safeguard capabilities developed over the years by Leonardo in a strategic sector for the country in which substantial state investments have been made,” Profumo said.

Using OSN as a “vehicle” was the way to safeguard that investment, he added.

Asked on Wednesday about Profumo’s proposal, Fincantieri CEO Giuseppe Bono said: “We will do what the government tells us to do.”

Both Leonardo and Fincantieri are controlled by the Italian state.

Profumo appeared to receive support this week from Italy’s industry minister, Carlo Calenda, who said: “Leonardo is a fundamental piece in this deal — it needs to have the same dignity as Thales, or else this merger will not go ahead.”

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Jura said:

interestingly, France receives missiles, launchers to replace Milan anti-tank system
1 hour ago

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France’s defence procurement agency, the Direction Générale de l’Armement (DGA), has accepted the delivery to the French Armed Forces of the first batch of 50 missiles and 20 firing posts from the new MMP system.
The deliveries were conducted between 15 and 23 November and will gradually replace the Milan, the HOT missiles mounted on VAB Armoured Fighting Vehicles and the ERYX for some of these missiles. Issued to French Army infantry and cavalry units, as well as Special Forces, the MMP program will see the delivery of 400 firing posts and 1,750 missiles across all of the French Armed Forces by 2025, with first operations deployments expected in 2018.

The DGA, which awarded MBDA the MMP contract in 2013, qualified the system last July, clearing the way for serial production. According to MBDA, MMP offers both ‘fire-and-forget’ and ‘man-in-the-loop’ capabilities and can be used by day and by night.

“Its multi-purpose warhead is effective against a wide variety of targets such as vehicles, armour, infrastructures and personnel. Its extreme accuracy gives it the ability to strike at a range of over 4,000 metres while minimising the risk of collateral damage,” managing director MBDA Australia Andy Watson said. “The missile can also be fired from confined spaces, a crucial characteristic for urban combat, by dismounted infantrymen.”

MMP is to be fitted on the EBRC Jaguar armoured reconnaissance and combat vehicle, due to be delivered to the French Army in 2020.

MMP is being offered to the ADF as an integrated Anti-Tank Guided Weapon (ATGW) on both the Rheinmetall Boxer and the BAE Systems AMV-35 vehicles under consideration for Army’s Land 400 program. The missile is also being offered with its Infantry Firing Post for the Land 4108 program, which is seeking a replacement to the in-service Javelin ATGW.

Watson said MBDA is committed to building, maintaining and developing the MMP system in Australia if selected. The company has created an Australian Partnering Network of eight local engineering and technical services companies, including Ferra Engineering,

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, and

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, that would carry out the work.

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France Working on Electromagnetic Railgun for Naval Application

A French-German electromagnetic (EM) railgun project was unveiled during the 2017 "DGA Innovations" event hosted by the French defense procurement agency (DGA) yesterday. Launched by the ISL (French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis) in 1987, the project was mostly kept under cover until now.
Industry partners in the project include: Naval Group, ISL, Nexter Systems, Nexter Munitions and MBDA. A Naval Group concept ship (scale model) fitted with EM Railguns is set to be unveiled at Euronaval 2018. DGA and ISL believe that the first practical application for the technology would indeed be in the naval field.

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.

It is not the first time that we report on the French Navy (Marine Nationale) interest for this technology. You may recall that in

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at Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD) in the USA.

Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division is the location where the US Navy and Office of Naval Research (ONR)

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Frigate Guépratte transited Bosphorus & entered Black Sea

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Frigate Courbet

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