The United States Navy has awarded TexTech Engineered Composites a USD 76.8 million contract to deliver carbon phenolic heatshield materials and other reentry components for American and British strategic missile programmes, according to the contracting notice.
The award, made on 2 October, is described as a “cost-plus-fixed-fee indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the delivery of carbon phenolic heatshield materials and other reentry materials.”
The notice specifies that it “combines purchases for the U.S. Navy (98 percent) and the government of the United Kingdom (2 percent) under the Foreign Military Sales program.”
Work will take place in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and is scheduled to run “to be completed by October 2030.” At award, the Navy obligated USD 4.3 million in research, development, test and evaluation funds alongside USD 3 million in UK FMS funds. The contracting office confirmed that “$4,309,864 will expire at the end of the current Fiscal year.”
The Navy stated that the contract was not competed, citing 10 USC 3204(a)(1), with the notice saying the award was issued because “only one responsible source and no other type of supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements.” TexTech is one of the few US suppliers capable of producing the specialised carbon phenolic ablative materials used to protect reentry bodies during extreme atmospheric heating.
Carbon phenolic remains integral to thermal protection systems for submarine launched ballistic missile reentry vehicles. The UK’s two percent share reflects its participation in the Trident missile enterprise through long standing cooperative arrangements with the US Navy.
The Navy said the contract supports both ongoing reentry material production and development work, with the RDT&E funding indicating continuing improvement and qualification of thermal protection materials.
The Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division is listed as the contracting activity.
That blasted BBC News edit of Trump’s speech could have far-reaching consequences for future defence deals with the USA. Whatever nonsense some observers may say about the ‘Special Relationship’, it amounts to huge advantages for UK defence and commerce.
I cannot stand Trump as I think the man is
1) divisive for US political cohesion and I personally want a strong cohesive US as the lead liberal democracy and I think he and his cohorts have walked the US into a classic Chinese political warfare trap.
2) Divisive for western unity.. the west can only be the dominant paridgm if European powers, the U.S. and pacific democracies walk hand in hand.. as soon as they split.. china and Russia together have the ability ( or will have within a decade ) to challenge any one group on its own.. but I still believe if the entire west was unified and its populations held faith with their polical leadership through serious suffering the west would win.
Essentially I consider him a geopolitical and geostrategic idiot who’s profoundly damaging the future of the west.
But and this is really important as a Broadcaster the BBC represents the UK as a whole as such it is charged with being completely unbiased in its reporting.. its whole purpose is to find and publish the truth.. so supporting the core strength of a liberal democracy.. a well educated electorate that has sources of information it can trust.. this a a massive breach of that.. essentially the bbc has been found to twice twist the truth around what happened on that profoundly impactful day in US democratic and constitutional history.. it fucked up very very badly and I don’t think we have seen the last of the repercussions of that .. both geopolitically ( an institution of UK fairness and honesty has been found to lie) and from an internal political point of view around our own populations further reduction in trust in our media and information… china and Russia are laughing their arses off about this… they could not have scripted it from a political warfare activity point of view.
Hi Jonathan I do think this may actually be your finest post so far and I am being completely serious ! Your last paragraph is an absolute belter and anyone who understands the nuances of the 2023 National Security Act will understand why !
The fact is this act may be an “honest mistake” or one of omission but the detrimental effects on our relationship with our Largest NATO ally may directly impact the Defence of the Realm. So surely some bright spark in HMG would send in the Security Services to find out if there is any possibility of this being the covert actions of a foreign agency.
If nothing else it will mean a lot of squeaky bottoms in the BBC and we would find out who did it, who authorised it and why ?
The bit that really gets me angry about this is in most companies anyone caught and proven to be “acting against the best interests of the business” is held to account and likely dismissal ! I think trashing the BBCs reputation and being sued pretty well counts as not being “a good day at the office”.
But not one single peep out of the BBC or HMG about investigations, suspensions or any HR actions what so ever.
So yes I’d send SB in, investigate, pull emails and whatever else is necessary to find out how this happened ! We may get some very unpleasant surprises because the BBC (mainly the TV side of it) is being caught out repeatedly being biased on way too many occasion’s.
If it transpires it’s some idiotic production decision made as “it doesn’t matter as he lost and will not be back” then boy did they muck up and let Trump sue them instead.
They can keel their “special relationship”
I see great benefit to them, little for the UK.
I would much rather pay the small amount of money for a fully autonomous deterrent than share anything with the current US administration or likely future ones.
Americas day has passed, time to move on.
Jim and Jonathan, we have to look beyond the current administration and recognise the long-term benefits of the ‘Special Relationship’, as it’s a concept that most of the time appears to be mostly vacuous. However, the relationship may well run far deeper than we acknowledge and no doubt we would be amazed by just how much cross-trade in intelligence data and other subterranean activities exists beyond the public’s gaze. On balance, I guess the secret world of intel exchange will continue regardless of who is sitting in the White House. That said, the public’s perception is influenced by what the media says and headline comments made by Trump’s cabinet members that incite the press to forecast a degradation of the ‘Special Relationship.’ Such cheap populism won’t damage the long-term union, as one US gentleman once told me, ‘Whatever differences we have, we are still kin.’ I’m sure some allies would like to see US/UK relationship under strain for whatever reason, but have no fear, it will outlive Trump.
Jim, America is not to be written off, and she will always be a critical component of the West’s security for many years to come.
Small amount of money are you being serious ? To be truly independent it would require our own Sovereign Satellite systems to support worldwide communication’s and targeting data, our own design and the ability to produce a MIRV, a completely new Command & Control system and the design, construction and testing of an actual SLBM.
Simplest way to do it would be to speak to France as I suspect they would just love to reduce their expenditure by half.
Fact is we pay very little for US R&D costs and what we buy we get at the same cost as the USN as it’s bundled in with their orders, it’s actually a very good deal. Don’t be under the illusion the US do this as a good will gesture, they do it for access to our territories, industry abilities (you would be surprised what we make that ends up in US boats) and it’s the uncertainty factor in deterrence.
The latter is key to it all as it’s all down to the uncertainty principle, a country may attack NATO but decide to avoid hitting US forces with Nucs and make an educated guess that a US President does nothing, but what about us we and France are the Jokers in the calculation.
The classic argument in the Cold War was that Russia could do precisely that and possibly get away with it, but if the U.K, France or both retaliate we would do so much damage to them that essentially they would lose, leaving the US still standing.
Champagne style nuclear system on a brown ale budget, you have to hand it to HMG, pretty sweet only picking up 2% of the cost.
Thanks 🙏 to MAGA
😀
Yes Maurice 10, aligned to Vance’s statement about the UK becoming the first Islamic Nuclear armed state Starmer has some real serious grovelling to do. I hope he realises that, but I am not over confident he will.
This is one area that the UK will need to get a sovereign capability on if it is planning to use project nightfall as a steppingstone. You dont need this capability if your just building a short range ballistic missile like project nightfall, but if you want to move to medium and then intermediate range ballistic missiles then sovereign ability to design and build heat shields for re-entry vehicles is fundamentally important.. it’s why lots of people can build a short range ballistic missiles and the are common as you like but very few can build medium range and beyond… personally I think if we want to convince Russia the UK is a nation that’s two hard to chew on we need a sovereign capability to build medium to intermediate range ballistic missiles and pop both conventional and nuclear warheads on them.
We did have one. UK invented a quartz phenolic for aeroshells (3DQP). It was used on Chevaline. As to what happened to it? No idea.
It is slightly strange that we don’t have our own equivalent of what I like to think of as S Korea and China’s ‘Strategic Artillery’. We are an island with lots of island bases, why don’t we have the ability to strike over long distances, and the targeting satellites etc to go along with it? GCAP carrying STRATUS might be a substitute by the mid-2030s, but it is very strange that we have abandoned that sort of reactive capability since, essentially, the retirement of the V-bombers.
As a thought experiment, imagine if instead of the carrier project we had built up a satellite constellation and the ability to produce conventional missiles of 3000-4000km range and then stationed them on Cyprus, the Falklands, the Shetlands etc. as well as in K-VLS-II style large silos on our warships and maybe even the Astutes (if we had started early enough). Would that represent more or less capability and value for money?