Acquisition headlines (10/24 – 10/30/2022)

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• Fireside Chat 1: Bridging the Valley of Death with USD A&S Bill LaPlante
• Panel 1: PPBE Reform – How Does Money Impact Tech Transition? with Ellen Lord and Mike Brown
• Panel 2: What’s Next for Small Business Innovation? with Emily Murphy, DHS PIL Sandra Schmidt, OSBP David Busigo, and Govini CEO Tara Murphy Dougherty
• Fireside Chat 2: The Role of Research and Development in an Era of Integrated Deterrence with USD R&E Heidi Shyu and former DPAP Shay Assad.
• Panel 3: Workforce Next with Brian Whittaker, Bob Etris, James Woolsey, and Ajay Vinze

LaPlante on why weapon production constitutes deterrence. (Air and Space Forces) ““Production is deterrence,” LaPlante asserted… Guiding his decisions during his term as the No. 3 executive at the Pentagon, he said, is the urgency of the China threat and providing equipment that’s useful in “a real, high-end fight” such that the U.S. can back up its rhetoric with relevant hardware in the hands of operators.”

• China is “really good” at modern warfare, he said. “They can do the kill chain. They’ve figured that out.” He said that “anybody who says … ’it’s not as bad as you think’—you’re wrong.”
• “So be humble about predicting what you think you’re going to need. What you have to do is hedge your bets,” LaPlante said.

Pentagon’s Shyu, LaPlante push to get critical tech into production. (Defense News) “Lawmakers approved $324 million in RDER funding for fiscal 2022, and DoD requested $358 million in fiscal 2023. The Senate Appropriations Committee wants to cut that request in half to $176 million, saying officials haven’t made sufficient plans to transition RDER technology to the field… The department is making plans for its fiscal 2024 RDER funding request.“

Raytheon Technologies (RTX) surpasses Q3 earnings estimates. (Yahoo!) “This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of 9.01%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this an aerospace and defense company would post earnings of $1.12 per share when it actually produced earnings of $1.16, delivering a surprise of 3.57%… While Raytheon Technologies has outperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors’ minds is: what’s next for the stock?”

Admiral: Navy sees next step for unmanned in key autonomy contract. (Breaking Defense) “That “next step” will materialize in the coming weeks — by the end of this calendar year — when Moton’s team publishes a formal solicitation to industry for a role dubbed the “autonomy baseline manager” (ABM), he said. The ABM contract winner, scheduled to be announced in summer 2023, will assist the service in doing the ground-level engineering work… “From an acquisition standpoint,” he said, the government-controlled baseline “allows us to continually inject competition.””

Titanium supply chain crisis: what does it mean for aerospace. (Aero Times) “The Aerospace industry is currently facing a titanium supply shortage after international sanctions were placed on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.”

Navy to break up some big contracts to increase small business participation. (Federal News Network) “….  breaking up the contracts so will also help the service meet the goals of President Joe Biden’s executive order on “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.”… “We know that the primes are going to the subs anyway, contracting with them directly. We can save the pass-through money and get more capability and more service out of that dollar, than just giving a bonus to the industry partner to just pass the money through and take that percentage off the top.”

• This year, the Navy will put terms into five contracts to incentivize prime contractors to meet their workshare agreements, as well as terms that allow the service to withhold payment if the company fails to live up to the agreements.

Apex raises seed round to mass produce smallsats. (Space News) “Ian Cinnamon, cofounder and chief executive of Apex, argues that satellite buses have lacked the innovation seen in other parts of the space industry. “The satellite buses themselves are very much an afterthought,” he said in an interview, as companies focus their attention on payloads. Yet, “the major issue, whether it be cost of timeline, is now entirely on the bus side.” He said the company sees Aries as a standardized bus that can be produced in large volumes, but also be customized in much the same way automobiles are.”

• The company plans to build its first bus in 2023 to launch as a demonstration, followed by five in 2024. Cinnamon said that production will increase to 100 in 2026.
• Apex will differentiate itself from other smallsat manufacturers by focusing primarily on commercial customers, whereas its competitors do extensive business for the Space Development Agency and other government organizations.

TSMC says efforts to rebuild US semiconductor industry are doomed to fail. (Apple Insider) “Morris Chang founded TSMC in 1987 when Taiwan recruited him from the US to help build an electronics industry. The contract manufacturer rose to become the top chipmaker in the world, commanding 20% of global wafer fabrication and 92% of advanced chip capacity. US share in global chip manufacturing shrunk from 37% in 1990 to 12% in 2020.”

Aerospace manufacturers placing orders earlier to beat parts shortages. (Reuters) “Manufacturers are ordering material as far as two years in advance – a break with just-in-time models used previously to restrain costs – and dispatching specialized staff to keep production lines running… Supply-chain disruptions cost aerospace and defense companies an average of $160 million in lost revenue for the prior year, according to a first-quarter survey of aerospace companies.”

The quiet manufacturing revolution that’s transforming America. (Fast Company) “A funny thing happened on the way to the collapse of America’s manufacturing sector: it actually didn’t. While innumerable headlines of the past three to four decades have chronicled the decline of U.S. manufacturing, the coverage has almost entirely overlooked a resurgence that’s well underway.”

Rocket maker Aerojet solicits acquisition offers – sources. (Reuters) “… the U.S. rocket maker whose $4.4 billion sale to Lockheed Martin Corp was blocked by antitrust regulators in February, is soliciting offers from potential suitors… Aerojet shares jumped 7% to $48.46 in morning trading in New York on Tuesday.”

New next generation air dominance fighter renderings from Lockheed. (The Warzone) “Tailless designs have cropped up frequently in NGAD-adjacent concept art as they would provide very low observability (stealth), considerable internal volume for fuel, weapons, and sensors, and a high degree of efficiency.”

• Also, the manned element of NGAD is not really a traditional fighter. Range, payload, and low observability are certain to take priority over maneuverability.

After 5 full-throttle years, Kessel Run is settling in for the long haul. (Defense One) “Col. Richard Lopez took over Kessel Run this summer after serving as the program manager and materiel leader for the Unified Platform program and leading the LevelUP Code Works software factory.”

Pentagon’s project maven transition stymied by Congress, official says. (Defense News) ““That’s really the one thing that has prevented the whole transition, is that CR,” Margaret Palmieri, deputy chief digital and AI officer, said Oct. 25… Officials this year confirmed Project Maven would be reapportioned. In April, Vice Adm. Robert Sharp, then-director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, said his team would take over operational control, including “responsibility for labeled data, AI algorithms, test and evaluation capabilities, and the platform.””

AFRL upgrades rocket part production with 20 new machines. (Aero-mag) “The Rocket Propulsion Division, part of AFRL’s Aerospace Systems Directorate, recently modernised its fabrication shop with five new milling machines; three lathes; a waterjet cutter; a wire electrical discharge machining, or EDM machine; a sinker EDM machine; a small hole EDM and numerous manually operated machines…. AFRL’s Rocket Propulsion Division designs and manufactures components for liquid rocket engines and solid rocket motors.”